Monday, December 31, 2007

The Disappearance of Alfredo Jiménez Mota

Posted By on Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 2:48 PM

Michael Marizco, on his Border Reporter blog, has a story about Alfredo Jiménez Mota, a newspaper reporter who vanished in 2005.

On the eve of the one thousandth day of the reporter’s disappearance, the following story was not accepted by Sonoran newspaper El Imparcial unless I was willing to redact the names of those suspected in his kidnapping. The reporter, Alfredo Jiménez Mota, worked for the newspaper for seven months before he disappeared, April 2005. He’s never been found.

HERMOSILLO, SONORA – It was the biggest news story to hit the border state of Sonora in a year, maybe longer.

Eleven people kidnapped at the hands of a Cananea narco-trafficker; then a manhunt by state police and the Army, riflemen in a helicopter hovering over the once provinical capital of Arizpe, meticulously stalking the band of killers who tried to escape down the banks of the Rio Sonora. The list of the dead grew by the hour. Seventeen. Then 20. Twenty-two. Maybe more, I lost count of how many died that day, May 17, 2007.

Read the full account here.