Mexican journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva. Photo: Google

By KELIN DILLON

Several weeks after Mexican journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva was shot at by two armed men on Dec. 15, the Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office and the Secretariat of Citizen Security arrested 11 individuals alleged to have been involved in the attack, revealed Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday, Jan. 11.

The two gunmen reportedly attacked Gómez Leyva from motorcycles as the journalist was driving his truck near his home in Mexico City, though the vehicle’s armored components helped shield Gómez Leyva from being hit by any of the bullets aimed in his direction.

“At 11:10 p.m., 200 meters from my house, two people on a motorcycle shot at me, apparently with the clear intention of killing me,” posted Gómez Leyva on his Twitter account after the fact. “The armor of my truck that I was driving saved me, and I have reported the matter to the authorities.”

The attack against Gómez Leyva occurred the very same day Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called the journalist “dishonest” and that his reporting “could give you a brain tumor” during his daily morning press conference on Dec. 15, just one of many of López Obrador’s repeated public rants against his supposed opponents in the press.

Though López Obrador initially offered his support to Gómez Leyva immediately after the attack, AMLO seemed to change his tune against the journalist – who has been one of López Obrador’s most prominent media targets during his press conferences –  in the days to follow.

“When they raise the issue of Ciro, I don’t rule out the idea that it could be a self-attack, not because he fabricated it, but because someone did it to affect us,” said AMLO on Dec. 20, alleging that the assault could have been planned by his political opponents.

On Dec. 30, López Obrador went on to ask Sheinbaum to investigate the attack with swiftness and figure out who perpetrated the assault, a request that came to fruition with Jan. 11’s mass arrest.

“These 11 alleged perpetrators are linked to the material authorship of the events, and the investigation continues to find the other perpetrators,” said Sheinbaum following Wednesday’s apprehensions.

“I reiterate, there will be no impunity,” added Sheinbaum, suggesting the Mexico City government will hold those responsible for the assault against Gómez Leyva accountable to the law.