GUNMEN KILL DEPUTY EDITOR OF CRUSADING NEWSPAPER

Gunmen have ambushed and killed the deputy editor of Mexico's crusading
weekly newspaper Zeta, the latest in a series of attacks against the
publication's leadership.

Francisco Ortiz Franco was gunned down in Tijuana yesterday as he left a
clinic with his children, said Raul Gutierrez, spokesman for the Baja
California state attorney general's office.

State investigators re-enacting the killing at the scene said a masked man
armed with a pistol jumped from the passenger side of a black 4X4 Jeep and
shot Ortiz at close range while he sat in the driver's seat of his blue
Chevrolet Cobra. The Jeep then sped away.

Ortiz was hit four times in the head and neck, and died at the scene, said
Francisco Castro Trenti, director of forensics for the Baja California
state attorney general's office. The children, aged eight and 10, were
unharmed.

Zeta has been famed for its reporting on the influence of drug traffickers
in Tijuana, home to several notorious narcotics operations.

In Mexico City, Federal Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said he
had no firm details yet about the incident, but he told reporters at a news
conference: "If we have evidence that it deals with organised crime, we
will take over the case."

Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered federal officials to collaborate with
local authorities in order to resolve the investigation rapidly.

"The federal government reiterates its condemnation of every act that
pretends to weaken the integrity of journalists and its conviction that a
free and critical press is the best guarantee for the strengthening of our
democracy," the President said in a statement.

Ortiz, who trained as a lawyer, was one of three editors at the newspaper
and specialised in legal affairs. Drug trafficking was not his main focus.

Employees at the paper said they expected to issue a statement later.

The newspaper's co-founder Hector Felix Miranda was ambushed and killed on
April 20, 1988.

In 1997, the newspaper's publisher, Jesus Blancornelas, was badly wounded
in a gangland-style attack that killed his bodyguard and driver, Luis Lauro
Valero.

Shortly before he was shot, Blancornelas had written a column blaming David
Barron Corona, a reputed lieutenant in the Arellano Felix drug gang, for a
machine-gun killing of two federal agents outside a Tijuana courthouse.
Barron was among the men who attacked Blancornelas. He died in the crossfire.

Following the assault on Blancornelas, Ortiz vowed that threats would not
deter the staff.

"Obviously, we are not going to change," he said at the time. "We are used
to working on deep investigations, and that's not going to change."

Ortiz was among several journalists and government officials working with a
Mexican advisory task force and the Miami-based Inter-American Press
Association (IAPA) on an investigation into Felix Miranda's murder.

IAPA, issued a statement yesterday afternoon expressing its "outrage" at
Ortiz's killing. Rafael Molina, chairman of IAPA's Committee on Freedom of
the Press and Information, sent messages to Baja California officials
calling for a "prompt investigation in order to determine who was
responsible and to subject them to the full force of the law".