Explotions at Mexican consulate in New York could be related to Brad Will's assassination anniversary

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two homemade grenades exploded outside the Mexican Consulate in New York City early on Friday in an incident Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said was similar to an attack on the British Consulate in 2005.  The grenades exploded about 3:50 a.m. (0750 GMT) on Friday, breaking three windows, Kelly said. There were people inside the midtown Manhattan building at the time but they did not hear the explosion and there were no injuries, he said.

"These events are remarkably similar," Kelly told reporters. He said the devices used in both events were similar, the incidents happened about the same time of day and that in both cases a man on was seen riding away on a bicycle.

When asked if it could be linked to Saturday's first anniversary of the death of independent U.S. journalist Brad Will in Mexico, Kelly said, "That's something that we're looking at. It's all part of the investigation." Will was killed when gunmen opened fire in Mexico's colonial city of Oaxaca near roadblocks set up by leftists pushing to topple a state governor.

Otro posible vínculo con la explosión del viernes sería la muerte de Will. El periodista fue baleado en la ciudad mexicana de Oaxaca, el 27 de octubre del 2006, cuando grababa un enfrentamiento entre manifestantes y sujetos armados.

Varios activistas han dicho que Will fue muerto por fuerzas del gobierno. Investigadores estatales en México detuvieron a dos funcionarios locales por la muerte, pero los liberaron luego que los fiscales sugirieron que Will fue atacado por un manifestante.

An Activist, Then a Journalist, and Now a Victim of the Violence He Covered By COLIN MOYNIHAN

When Bradley Will traveled to a state in southern Mexico last month, his goal was to document and describe the turbulence in the region, where striking teachers and their allies demanding the resignation of the state’s governor have clashed at times with armed attackers.

The conflict had received scant attention in much of the news media, but it was exactly the kind of situation that Mr. Will relished witnessing and writing about. He often traveled from New York City to Latin America to chronicle little-known disputes, and his articles made him a familiar figure in the world of the alternative media.

In his last written dispatch, which was posted on Oct. 16 on a Web site maintained by the New York City chapter of the Independent Media Center, Mr. Will described the killing of a man in Oaxaca and said that some people in Oaxaca blamed the death on paramilitary vigilantes.
The images filmed by Mr. Will minutes before his death, which are on the Independent Media Center’s Web site, show a chaotic scene, in which men used slingshots to shoot projectiles and gunshots can be heard. At one point, Mr. Will appears to videotape from beneath a truck, aiming his lens at a man firing a pistol. Minutes later, during the final images of the video, a cry is heard and the camera appears to fall to the ground.

On Friday, Mr. Will, 36, was fatally shot in the chest while videotaping near a barricaded road at the edge of the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the state with the same name, during a confrontation between demonstrators equipped with Molotov cocktails and fireworks and a group of men armed with pistols and rifles. Witnesses have said that Mr. Will was hit by bullets fired toward the demonstrators.

OPINION Oct. 27 marks the first anniversary of the assassination of New York Indymedia photojournalist Brad Will by police in Oaxaca, Mexico, under the thumb of a corrupt and tyrannical governor.Will was gunned down just outside Oaxaca City while filming a pitched battle between supporters of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and members of the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO). Will, 36 at the time of the killing, was the only American among 26 victims shot by Ruiz's police and paramilitary operatives during protests in that state in 2006. No one has been held accountable for any of these murders.A year after Will's death, those who killed him are walking the streets. No charges have been filed against them, despite graphic evidence of their culpability. Will, true to his profession, never let go of his camera; he inadvertently filmed his murder, and photos of five cops firing their weapons at him appeared in major Mexican newspapers the day after the killing.