All fingers at this stage seem to be pointing at organised crime after the body of Mexican crime journalist Enrique Perea Quintanilla was found last week on a dirt road on the outskirts of Chihuahua City; he had been shot twice with a .45-caliber gun, in the head and back.

The 50-year-old Quintanilla published a magazine called “Dos Caras, Una Verdad” (”Two Faces, One Truth”), which covered issues like unsolved murders, corrupt government officials and the local drug trade. Before that he had been on the police beat for 20 years for various newspapers and radio stations in the area. The July edition of the magazine had apparently run an interview with an unnamed local drug lord who had spilled the beans on his drug-running activities.

The State Prosecutor was sure of the link to organised crime, while the international journalist’s advocacy group The Committee to Protect Journalists will conduct their own investigation to see whether it was related to his work. According to a former colleague, Quintanilla had not mentioned receiving any death threats.

As we have mentioned before, murders and intimidation against journalists is common in countries where the drug trade is particularly violent, with self-censorship often being the understandable result.