Rights groups decry Colombian leader's murder
Source: Reuters
(Recasts, adds details of president seizing assets) By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a Colombian community leader representing victims of paramilitary violence in what rights groups decried on Thursday as a move to silence those seeking justice against militia commanders. Former paramilitary chiefs, who fought a dirty war against Colombia's Marxist rebels, have demobilized in a peace deal, but rights groups say they remain powerful and their criminal networks are intact. Police said two gunmen riding a motorbike shot and killed Yolanda Izquierdo on Wednesday outside her home in Cordoba province, where she had received threats for seeking compensation from paramilitaries whom she said stole land from peasants. Her murder follows the recent slaying of Freddy Abel, who also represented victims forced from their homes by the conflict in the Cordoba area, rights groups said. "These murders are clearly intended to intimidate victims and witnesses and prevent them from telling the truth about paramilitary abuses," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Victims will find it harder than ever to trust the safeguards set up by the government," he said. Under the peace agreement struck in 2003, more than 31,000 paramilitaries have handed in their guns and promised confessions about atrocities and reparation for victims in exchange for reduced prison terms of up to eight years. SECURITY BEEFED UP Izquierdo had been a representative of victims at the testimony of Salvatore Mancuso, a top militia commander who recently began recounting hundreds of murders and massacres committed under his command in the name of purging Marxist guerrillas in the 1990s. After Izquierdo's killing, President Alvaro Uribe, who has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight rebels and the cocaine trade, beefed up security for victims groups and ordered assets of militia commanders seized to pay compensation for victims. The murders of Izquierdo and Abel took place in Cordoba, the heartland of paramilitaries after they were set up in the 1980s by rich landlords looking for protection from rebels. Uribe's U.S.-backed security crackdown has sharply reduced violence though the FARC rebels are still fighting in rural areas. Izquierdo was the leader of more than 700 peasants who charged Mancuso's paramilitaries had forced them off their land during an offensive to retake the area from rebels. Her sister and authorities said she had received threats. "They advised her that she should stop pressing for reparation and she should leave things alone," local police commander Col. Jaime Velasco told local television.
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