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Mexico’s freedom of data institute, a authorities company, stated Thursday that it could begin an investigation into the president’s disclosure on nationwide tv of the non-public cellphone variety of a journalist for The New York Instances.
The investigation facilities on a choice by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador throughout a televised information convention on Thursday that left many aghast in Mexico, one of many deadliest international locations on the earth for journalists. At the least 128 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006, in keeping with the Committee to Defend Journalists.
Through the information convention, Mr. López Obrador learn aloud from an e mail from Natalie Kitroeff, The New York Instances’s bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. She had requested remark for an article revealing that U.S. regulation enforcement officers had for years been trying into claims that allies of Mr. López Obrador met with and took tens of millions of {dollars} from drug cartels.
Along with railing in opposition to Ms. Kitroeff and figuring out her by title, Mr. López Obrador publicly recited her telephone quantity.
“That is tantamount to doxxing, unlawful by Mexican privateness legal guidelines and locations reporters in danger,” Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico consultant for the Committee to Defend Journalists, stated on X, the social media platform.
Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Transparency, Entry to Data and Private Information Safety, or INAI, stated in a statement that its investigation would search to determine whether or not Mr. López Obrador had violated Mexican laws defending private knowledge. The institute runs Mexico’s freedom of data system, which was created greater than 20 years in the past to make authorities operations extra clear and curb abuses of energy.
Mr. López Obrador, whose six-year time period is coming to an finish this yr, has lengthy maintained a confrontational relationship with the information media and commonly assaults journalists by title at his morning information conferences.
The transfer in opposition to a journalist for The Instances follows weeks of assaults on a reporter for ProPublica. It revealed a narrative final month detailing a separate investigation into accusations that drug cartels had donated tens of millions to Mr. López Obrador’s unsuccessful presidential marketing campaign in 2006. The president known as the reporter, Tim Golden, a “pawn” and “a mercenary within the service” of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Instances’s article on Thursday revealed a newer inquiry throughout Mr. López Obrador’s presidency, which began in 2018. American regulation enforcement officers spent years trying into claims that confidants of Mr. López Obrador had obtained tens of millions of {dollars} from drug cartels whereas he ran the nation, the article revealed.
However as an alternative of talking to The Instances in regards to the American inquiry, the president determined to launch Ms. Kitroeff’s telephone quantity on nationwide tv, a very threatening tactic in a rustic the place so many journalists are harassed and killed.
“It is a troubling and unacceptable tactic from a world chief at a time when threats in opposition to journalists are on the rise,” The Instances stated in an announcement on Thursday.
America by no means opened a proper investigation into Mr. López Obrador, The Instances reported, and the officers concerned finally shelved the inquiry after concluding that the U.S. authorities had little urge for food to pursue allegations in opposition to the chief of a key American ally.
Throughout their inquiry, U.S. officers recognized doable hyperlinks between the cartels and Mr. López Obrador’s allies and advisers after he took workplace, however didn’t discover any direct ties between the president himself and prison teams.
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