Police in Brazil have arrested seven people suspected of planning and carrying out the murder of a blogger-reporter in April, the fourth journalist to be killed in the country this year.
Decio Sa, 42, who had written about local corruption in the northeastern Maranhao state on his blog, was shot six times at a bar by two men who had arrived on a motorcycle, authorities said at the time of the killing.
Those arrested on Wednesday include a 24-year-old alleged gunman-for-hire suspected in 49 other murders in Maranhao, according to the newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo he also used to write for
Sa's killing was condemned in Brazil and internationally, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressing alarm over "what appears to be a disturbing trend of killing journalists."
Six journalists were killed in Brazil in 2012:
24 April 2012: Decio Sa, 42 year old blogger and reporter, was shot dead in the city of Sao Luis.
24 March 2012: Onei de Moura, head of a weekly newspaper, was shot dead in a small town in the Paraná state.
24 March 2012: Divino Aparecido Carvalho, artistic director at Rádio Cultura Am, was shot in the chest
12 February 2012: Paulo Roberto Cardoso Rodrigues, editor of the Mercosul News website, died in Ponta Para, in the southern Mato Grosso do Sul state, after being shot several times by two men on a motorcycle.
9 February 2012: Mario Randolfo Marques Lopes, 50, the editor of the website Vassouras na net, which criticized local politicians, judges and police, was shot dead with his girlfriend in the state of Rio de Janeiro
3 January 2012: Laercio de Souza, a journalist of Sucesso radio in Camacari, shot dead in the northeastern state of Bahia,
Source: AFP, DCMF
