Suspects in Murder of Indymedia Journalist Brad Will On Loose in Oaxaca

Press reports out of Mexico indicate the gunmen suspected of murdering New York journalist Brad Will are missing and not in police custody. Will died on Friday after being shot by paramilitaries in Oaxaca. The 36-year-old Indymedia journalist had his videocamera in his hand. Photos taken at the time of the shooting show the armed men who carried out the attack. They have been identified as local police officers and government officials. Initially a local mayor said five men had been detained. But the Mexican papers Milenio and Noticias de Oaxaca are now reporting that no arrests have been made.

John Gibler joins us on the phone from Oaxaca. He is an independent journalist and a human rights fellow with Global Exchange.

* John Gibler. Independent journalist based in Mexico and a Human Rights Fellow with Global Exchange.

Brad Will’s body is on route to his family in Wisconsin. There will be a memorial for in New York City at St. Mark’s Church, between 1:00pm and 5:00 pm on November 11th.

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AMY GOODMAN: John Gibler is on the line with us from Oaxaca, an independent journalist and Human Rights Fellow with Global Exchange. Welcome to Democracy Now!, John.

JOHN GIBLER: Thank you. Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the latest?

JOHN GIBLER: The latest news on the killers is indeed that they are missing. As a result of a Milenio investigation, we were unable to locate their whereabouts anywhere in the city of Oaxaca. I went yesterday to the scene of the shootings and interviewed several people there. They said that they were still in town and were actually at a house just four blocks away from where the shootings occurred, but they wouldn’t take me there, but for very obvious reasons, fear for their safety. I interviewed several people on the scene who were witness to the attacks and went against what the local chair of the city council had said, that the gunmen acted on their own and in self-defense. The governor of the state, Ulises Ruiz, has said that the men had been arrested, but that has now been proven to be false.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what are the local mayors saying? It was mayors who had announced that they had been arrested.

JOHN GIBLER: Exactly. Manuel Feria, who’s the chair of the city council in Santa Lucia, where the shootings occurred, he says that the APPO had initiated the attacks, the members of the Oaxaca People’s Assembly shooting at these police officers and trying to violently break into a property where they were located, which has been -- people I have interviewed on the scene, everyone, everyone has gone against that, saying that the gunmen had come through, tried to break through a barricade and gotten out of a pickup truck and opened fire, first at the barricade, and that the gunfire had then spread to several locations in surrounding blocks. It’s also important to remember that there were several shootouts simultaneously that day in different parts of the city.

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