Police rule out work-related motive in journalist’s murder in Rio de Janeiro province

Reporters Without Borders notes that the police claim to have arrested the person who fatally shot journalist José Rubem Pontes de Souza on the night of 30 October in a bar in Rio de Janeiro province and that, according to the police, the motive was not related to Souza’s journalistic work. The suspect is Renato Demétrio de Souza (no relation), a former member of the military police who had been wanted in the past for suspected robbery, drug-trafficking, two murders and forming an armed organisation. Police inspector Nei José Ramos Loureiro said that the suspect rented out juke-boxes to bars, sharing profits with influential local businessmen and others who helped him make sales, and that he shot Souza for refusing to enter into a business relationship with him. Two people who were in the bar where Souza was shot have reportedly identified the detainee as the killer. Souza was the third journalist to be murdered in Brazil within a two-week period last month. It currently appears that in only one of the three cases was the motive linked to the victim’s journalistic work. __________ 09.11.10- Newspaper editor becomes third journalist to be murdered in two weeks Local newspaper editor José Rubem Pontes de Souza was gunned down in a bar in the centre of Paraíba do Sul, 147 km north of Rio de Janeiro, on the evening of 30 October, becoming the third journalist to be murdered in Brazil in the space of two weeks. The owner and editor of Entre-Rios Jornal, a newspaper based in the nearby town of Três Rios, Souza was shot twice in the neck by an unidentified gunman who fired from the window and then fled, witnesses said. The first journalist to be murdered last month was Wanderley dos Reis, the owner of local free newspaper Popular News, who was fatally shot by intruders in his home in Ibitinga, in São Paulo state, on 16 October. His death was followed two days later by that of Rádio Caicó presenter Francisco Gomes Medeiros, who was gunned down as he left his home in Caicó, in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. It his case, it has been established that the motive was linked to his work as a journalist. The police investigating Souza’s murder have suggested he was killed in the course of a hold-up but the account given by people who were in the bar at the time does not support this hypothesis. Of late, Souza’s newspaper had giving a lot of coverage to the murder of a young woman in Três Rios. Souza was also active in local politics and ran for mayor of Paraíba do Sul in 2008. Reporters Without Borders joins various Brazilian NGOs in calling on the authorities to lose no time in establishing who was responsible for Souza’s murder and their motive. This sudden spate of murders of journalists comes just as Brazil improved its ranking (58th out of 178 countries) in the world press freedom index that Reporters Without Borders released on 20 October.