Colombia accepts blame in senator's 1994 murder
Source: Reuters
BOGOTA, March 6 (Reuters) - Colombia on Tuesday accepted responsibility for the 1994 assassination of a leading leftist politician in a victory for his family 13 years after his death. The assassination of Sen. Manuel Cepeda as he drove through Bogota was one of the highest-profile political killings during a brutal campaign by death squads against the country's left-wing Patriotic Union movement. Vice President Francisco Santos said before a human rights commission at the Organization of American States the government acknowledged blame for the murder because two soldiers were arrested and convicted for the shooting. "The government has assumed responsibility because there was participation and that was shown by the attorney general," Santos told reporters. But Cepeda's son, Ivan Cepeda, said the family would seek to take the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica to try to bring to justice those who ordered the murder. Cepeda was killed when gunmen opened fire from a Jeep. "We want justice and that those responsible are jailed," he said. Prosecutors ruled that paramilitary commanders ordered the killing. They found the soldiers had acted in collusion with right-wing paramilitaries established in the 1980s to counter leftist rebels and charged with some of the worst atrocities in the four-decade-old conflict. More than 3,000 members or leaders of the left-wing Patriotic Union party were murdered during the 1980s and 1990s in a campaign that wiped out the movement. Patriotic Union was created as a political wing of the country's oldest guerrilla group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after failed peace talks with the government in 1985. Violence in Colombia has decreased after President Alvaro Uribe began a U.S.-financed campaign against Latin America's longest guerrilla war. Guerrillas are still fighting, but more than 31,000 paramilitaries have disarmed in a peace deal.
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