MEXICO, 18 December, 2020, (TON): Nearly four years after Mexican journalist Miroslava Breach was shot dead outside her home, authorities have arrested the then-mayor of a town over suspected involvement.

A former mayor from northern Mexico's Chihuahua state was arrested Thursday for "complicity" in the 2017 murder of journalist Miroslava Breach, authorities said.

He has been accused of passing on information about the journalist to those who murdered her. According to authorities, the politician was the mayor of Chinipas in Chihuahua at the time. He belonged to the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

Breach was in her car outside her home in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. Breach, a 54-year-old veteran crime and politics reporter, was shot eight times in the head on March 23, 2017, as she left her home to take her son to school.

A correspondent for the national newspaper La Jornada and the regional news website Norte de Ciudad Juárez, Breach covered the intersection of corruption and crime. A year before she was killed, she had reported on alleged links between politicians and the organized crime syndicate known as La Línea.

In 2018, the United Nations and AFP launched an award to honor journalists who risk their lives to cover human rights abuses in Mexico, in tribute to Breach and another slain journalist, Javier Valdez.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. This has been the most violent year for journalists in Mexico for at least 10 years, with 19 murdered just this year, Alejandro Encinas, deputy interior minister for human rights.