Gunmen execute sons of two prominent Mexican journalists

PanARMENIAN.Net - Gunmen executed two sons of two prominent Mexican journalists in the northern city of Chihuahua, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office said on Sunday, May 5, and police found seven bodies dumped in a Mexico City suburb, according to Reuters.

Alfredo Paramo, 20, and Diego Paramo, 21, were shot dead in Chihuahua early on Saturday after being chased through the streets by gunmen in a car, said spokesman Carlos Gonzalez.

They are the sons of well-known Mexican financial journalist David Paramo, who hosts a radio show, appears on TV Azteca and has a national newspaper column, and Martha Gonzalez, the editor of the local El Peso newspaper.

"We still don't know what they were doing there," Carlos Gonzalez said. "But this has nothing to do with the professional activities of their parents."

Mexican journalists are often targeted and killed by drug cartels for reporting on their activities. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group, says 25 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1992.

In a separate incident, authorities found seven bodies dumped in a car in a Mexico City suburb on Sunday morning, a local police official said.

Two of the men were found naked. Police have identified three of the men, who ranged in ages from 14 to 42, the official said.

It appeared all seven men, who were found in the suburb of Ecatepec, had been shot, the official said.

Last year, police discovered eight corpses dumped in the down-at-the-heels suburb of 2 million people.

Ecatepec lies in the State of Mexico, which borders the capital to the north and where more than half the population of greater Mexico City lives.

Until 2011, Enrique Pena Nieto, now the president of Mexico, was the governor of the State of Mexico.

He has vowed to take a different tack than his presidential predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who sent in the troops to tackle the warring drug cartels. Pena Nieto has focused instead on stopping kidnapping and extortion.

Roughly 70,000 people have died in drug-related killings since 2006, when Calderon launched his military-led campaign. More than 4,200 have died in the first four months of Pena Nieto's term, a slower pace than early 2012.