The legislature of the Mexican border state of Chihuahua has ordered life prison terms for persons convicted of murdering journalists, increasingly the targets of drug traffickers. Approval of the tougher sentence Thursday follows the killing last month of a news photographer, 21 year-old Luis Carlos Santiago, in Ciudad Juarez.
Mexico is now considered Latin America's most dangerous country for journalists, and with the border city of Ciudad Juarez at the center of a bloody drug war Chihuahua is especially perilous. According to the Inter-American Press Association, 12 journalists have been murdered in the northern state since 1991, and no one has been charged or convicted in the crimes. The Chihuahua state legislature unanimously passed the decree Thursday to change the state penal code to make "homicides against journalists" punishable with life in prison.
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