Gunmen kill leader of Colombian militia victims
Source: Reuters
By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Colombian gunmen killed a community leader who represented victims of paramilitary violence after she received threats warning her against seeking justice from disarmed militia bosses, authorities said on Thursday. Rights groups said Yolanda Izquierdo's murder underscored intimidation facing victims of paramilitaries, who critics say have kept criminal networks intact even after disarming under a peace deal to end their part in the four-decade conflict. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally fending off a scandal tying some of his congressional allies to the paramilitaries, ordered police to beef up protection of leaders of victims organizations and offered a $20,000 reward for the killers. Police said two gunmen shot and killed Izquierdo on Wednesday outside her home in Cordoba province, the heartland of the paramilitaries. Rich landlords set up the paramilitaries in the 1980s to defend themselves against guerrilla attacks and kidnapping. Her murder follows the recent killing of Freddy Abel, who also represented victims forced from their homes by the conflict in the Cordoba area, rights groups said. "These are serious criminal acts that intimidate those who have trusted the process established by the demobilization," Human Rights Watch director Jose Miguel Vivanco said in a statement. "These deaths are clearly meant to silence victims and witnesses." Izquierdo had been one of the leaders observing 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. She 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. Uribe, who has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight rebels and the cocaine trade, has since 2003 negotiated the disarming of 31,000 militia fighters who are accused of drug trafficking, massacres, land grabs and other atrocities. Under Colombia's Justice and Peace Law, militia bosses who give up crime and provide confessions and reparation to their victims will be allowed to serve a maximum of eight years in prison. Some face extradition to the United States.
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