A Mexican journalist was found dead days after he reported missing

Mexico’s national newspaper La Jornada said on Saturday that its staff reporter was found dead in the Pacific coastal state of Nayarit.

The body of journalist Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez was found on the outskirts of the state capital Tepic, La Jornada reported.

Sánchez Iñiguez, 59, has been missing since Wednesday and an appeal has been filed to locate him, Nayarit State Attorneys said. The journalist’s wife reported him missing, along with a computer and his cell phone.

La Jornada reported that prosecutors confirmed to the newspaper that Sánchez Iñiguez had been murdered and that the authorities believed his killing was motivated by his journalistic work.

“Signs of violence were found on the body and two handwritten marks were found on it,” prosecutors said in a statement, but did not disclose what the news said.

Handwritten characters are often left behind by drug cartels with the bodies of the victims, but the bureau said the motive for the murder is still under investigation.

The bureau said later Saturday that relatives had identified Sánchez Iñiguez’s body and said he had been dead a day or two before the body was found.

Sánchez Iñiguez was last seen in Xalisco, a Nayarit town long associated with heroin and opium smuggling.

He would be at least the second journalist killed in Mexico this year.

In February, news photographer José Ramiro Araujo was stabbed and beaten to death in the northern Mexican border state of Baja California.

2022 was one of the deadliest years ever for Mexican journalists, with 15 dead.

Just two days after Sánchez Iñiguez disappeared, another journalist was kidnapped in the same area. Jonathan Lora Ramírez was kidnapped on Friday by “armed, masked men who arrived at his home in Xalisco, broke down the door and took him away,” prosecutors said.

Lora Ramírez was found alive and in good condition on Saturday, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said a third media worker, identified as Osiris Maldonado, has been missing since July 3. Maldonado used to work as a journalist but now works as a teacher, prosecutors said. Maldonado left for work early in the morning of July 3 and has not been heard from since, officials said.

Prosecutors said they were investigating the possibility that the kidnappings and killings were related to the journalist’s profession.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said it “strongly condemns the murder in Nayarit State of journalist Luis Martín Sánchez Iñíguez, correspondent for La Jornada newspaper, and calls on the Mexican authorities to conduct an immediate and credible investigation.”