Journalist Reported Missing in Northwestern Mexico

CULIACAN, Mexico – The editor of the Nueva Prensa political magazine based in Ahome, a city in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, has disappeared, his family said.

Jesus Antonio Gamboa Urias disappeared on Friday night from a business owned by one of his brothers and his whereabouts is unknown.

His relatives reported the journalist’s disappearance to the prosecutor’s office in Ahome.

The 39-year-old Gamboa never returned home, has failed to answer his cell phone and has not been seen, his brothers said.

“We searched for him in the places that he more or less frequents and nothing ... we searched for him with the police (on Sunday) in different places and we are desperate and without news,” Gamboa’s family told prosecutors.

“The last time we saw him was Friday around midnight at his brother’s business. He was there a good while, left and we never heard from him again,” a friend of the journalist told Efe.

The Sinaloa state legislature scrapped a law in August limiting press coverage of crime that was opposed by the media and human rights groups.

Sinaloa is home to the powerful drug cartel that bears the state’s name.

The Sinaloa cartel, sometimes referred to by Mexican officials as the Pacific cartel, is a transnational business empire that operates in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, intelligence agencies say.

Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, the cartel’s leader, was captured on Feb. 22 by marines at the Miramar condominium in Mazatlan.

Guzman, the world’s most notorious and powerful drug lord, was captured without any shots being fired.