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Mexican Human Rights Lawyer Murdered
Digna Ochoa Placido, a prominent Mexican human rights lawyer, was found dead on Friday evening in her Mexico City office by a colleague, a state prosecutor said on Saturday.
According to the Attorney General Bernardo Batiz, Digna Ochoa's body was found with shots in the head and legs, as well as a note attached with threats against members of Mexico's left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
He said Digna Ochoa, known for defending poor Mexicans, often Indians, including imprisoned members of the Zapatista rebel army in southern Chiapas state and repeatedly attacked and threatened for taking on high-profile cases, was undoubtedly murdered over political motives.
"There is no doubt the motive was political," Saturday Batiz told a news conference.
"We are analyzing the message, it mentioned PRD members saying that the same thing would happen to another then if they continued the persecution," Batiz added.
The killing of Ochoa came after she had received many death threats in the past years and in 1999 she was twice kidnapped. The second time, Ochoa was about to be murdered with gas in her own house.
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