This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

State prosecutors have detained a town’s entire police force following the disappearance of a journalist in the southern state of Veracruz.

Thirty-six members of the Medellín de Bravo police department were brought in to give statements, according to a statement from the Veracruz state prosecutor’s office. Authorities detained three police officers there on Monday.

Prosecutors said the investigation is in an advanced stage and one of the lines of investigation is looking at the social activism of journalist Moisés Sánchez Cerezo, some of which was aimed at Medellín’s mayor, Omar Cruz.

Sánchez’s brother Juan Carlos Sánchez said on Monday that his brother had been threatened by Cruz. Cruz denied any involvement at a news conference on Monday. A group of nine armed men took Sánchez from his home on Friday along with his computer, camera and telephones.

Sánchez publishes a local weekly, La Union, which he has supported with his work as a cab driver. According to a reporters’ group, Sánchez wrote principally about local government corruption and violent deaths and published citizen complaints.

The Inter American Press Association said that Sánchez was threatened several times last year “by the mayor and by people he was not able to identify”.

Veracruz is one of the most dangerous states in Mexico for journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Since 2011, at least three journalists have been killed for their work. The organisation continues investigating the murders of at least six more in murky circumstances.

Veracruz’s governor, Javier Duarte de Ochoa, who took office in 2010, has tried to minimise any link between the journalists’ deaths and their work.