Sunday April 19 6:43 AM EDT

Top Human Rights Lawyer Killed in Colombia

 

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Assassins posing as journalists killed

Colombia's top human rights attorney on Saturday in a crime a leftist political leader called an act of "infinite cowardice."

Police spokesmen said that Eduardo Umana Mendoza, 50, a

crusading defender of Colombia's underclass whose clients included trade unionists, jailed guerrillas, Indians and the families of the country's many "disappeared," was killed at about 1.30 p.m. (1830 GMT) in his Bogota office.

A police spokesman said "two men and a woman who said they

were reporters and needed to see him" were responsible for killing Umana, with three shots from what was believed to be a .45 caliber pistol.

The sound of the killer's shots was apparently muted by a

silencer since the assassins were able to walk out of the office in a residential building and slip away without being challenged by a security guard at the entrance,

he said.

Umana recently won a long legal fight for the reopening of

an official probe into the fate of scores of people who disappeared after the army stormed Bogota's rebel-held Palace of Justice in November 1985, killing more than half the members of Colombia's Supreme Court along with about 100

other people.

The original probe was widely dismissed as a whitewash and

Umana had insisted that top government officials, including former president Belisario Betancur, were guilty of covering up massive human rights violations at the time.

 

 

Sample letter sent by CSN:

Dear Representative

I write to advise you that Colombia lost one of its greatest

champions of peace and justice on Saturday when the country's leading defender of human rights workers and victims of political violence, Eduardo Umana-Mendoza, was assassinated at his home in Bogota. On a past delegation to Colombia we had met with Umana at his residence, precisely where he was killed, to discuss his tireless efforts to defend those who were victims of abuse and

those, such as union leaders, whose voices the Colombian

government wrongly sought to silence by classifying social protest as "terrorism". His work was vitally important to us as we sought to offer what support we could to

protection of human rights in Colombia.

I ask on behalf of the Colombia Support Network that you help

us to move the U.S. government to urge Colombia's government to take the necessary steps to protect human rights workers. Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York and Rep. Daniel Burton of Indiana have recently have been greatly praising the head of the Colombian National Police, General Rosso Jose Serrano, as an

honest person who is helping to curb violence in Colombia.

Yet General Serrano has been unable or unwilling to provide necessary protection to people like Eduardo Umana Mendoza.

Nor has he arrested drug trafficker Carlos Castano. No further

U.S. aid at all should be sent to Colombia's army or police until an effective commitment is made to protect human rights workers and defense lawyers such as Umana Mendoza and until Carlos Castano is taken prisoner. If reporters from Newsweek magazine and from The New York Times can go to meet with Castano at his hideout in northern Colombia, why should not Serrano be

required to go there and arrest Castano as a condition of any

more U.S. aid? The U.S. government should not be in a position of providing aid to a Colombian governmental structure that works hand in glove with known drug-traffickers.

I request that you assist us by circulating in the House a

letter calling upon the U.S. government to condition any further aid to Colombia upon effective committment to protection of Colombia's human rights workers and to ending Carlos Castano's leadership of drug trafficking and paramilitary

slaughter. I also ask that you give serious consideration to

going to Colombia with us on a delegation or to having one of your staff members go.

 

Thank you for your attention and your invaluable support for

our efforts.

Sincerely,

Colombia Support Network

P.O. Box 1505

Madison, WI 53701

(608) 257-8753 fax (608) 255-6621

csn@igc.apc.org http://www.igc.apc.org/csn/