Brazilian reporter shot in alleged retaliation from drug gangs

A Brazilian reporter was shot and wounded in an attack meant to silence his writing about drug gangs, his newspaper said Thursday.

Amaury Ribeiro Junior, 44, was sitting at a bar in the outskirts of the nation's capital Wednesday afternoon when a young man shot him in the groin, the newspaper Correio Brasiliense reported.

The reporter's injuries were not life-threatening, the newspaper said.

"Traffickers are trying to silence the Correio with bullets. They won't succeed," a front-page article said, noting that the journalist two weeks ago began writing a series of stories about increased violence by drug gangs.

Police inspector Adriana Fernandez de Carvalho told the newspaper that a 16-year-old suspect was arrested for interrogation.

"There is no doubt it was (an attack) because of Amaury's stories," the newspaper's editor in chief, Ana Dubeaux, told The Associated Press.

She said that one of the newspaper's reporters was shot to death in 1984 following a series of stories on violence and police corruption.