Colombian judge sentences ex-mayor to 28 years in rare conviction for ordering reporter killed

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Updated: 29 minutes ago

Colombian judge sentences ex-mayor to 28 years in rare conviction for ordering reporter killed
By LIBARDO CARDONA | Associated Press Writer
2:38 PM EST, January 22, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A Colombian judge has sentenced a former mayor to 28 years in prison for ordering the April 2003 killing of a journalist who had repeatedly denounced the politician as corrupt.

Julio Cesar Ardila was among three men convicted in the murder of Jose Emeterio Rivas of the local radio station "Calor Estereo," who was shot to death in the steamy refinery city of Barrancabermeja on Colombia's main river, the Magdalena.

The sentence, handed down by judge Nelly Vallejo in the regional capital of Bucaramanga on Jan. 13, only came to light Thursday after the InterAmerican Press Association's president, Enrique Santos, publicized it.

Santos, co-publisher of Bogota's El Tiempo newspaper, noted that it is rare in Colombia for the mastermind of a journalist's killing to be brought to justice.

In the past 15 years, 57 journalists have been killed in Colombia while exercising their profession, according to the IAPA, with more than 70 percent of those killings going unpunished.




Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-colombia-journalist-slaying,0,3020917.story

[Judi Lynn]

1. COLOMBIA: Two politicians arrested for 2003 journalist murder

COLOMBIA: Two politicians arrested for 2003 journalist murder
September 13, 2007
Posted September 21, 2007

José Emeterio Rivas, Calor Estéreo
KILLED

Two local politicians have been arrested by Colombian authorities in the northern city of Barrancabermeja in connection with the April 2003 Rivas murder, according to press reports.

Juan Pablo Ariza, a candidate for the local city council, and Abelardo Rueda Tobón, who is running for state assembly, were detained after the Human Rights Unit of the attorney general’s office issued arrests warrants for their arrest, reported the Colombian press. The politicians, who are accused of aggravated murder and conspiring to commit a crime, were taken to a maximum security prison in the nearby city of Bucaramanga, reported the national daily El Tiempo.

Ariza and Rueda had been arrested in July 2003 and released a few months later. At the time of their initial arrest, they worked for the administration of then Barrancabermeja mayor Julio César Ardila Torres. According to El Tiempo,an arrest warrant was also issued for Ardila, who had been arrested in 2003 alongside Ariza and Rueda.

An apparent break in the case came on June 7 when Pablo Emilio Quintero Dodino, known as Bedoya, a demobilized member of the far-right paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) confessed to murdering Rivas as part of a peace process between paramilitaries and the Colombian government.

Rivas, a 44-year-old journalist for Radio Calor Estéreo, was killed by unidentified gunmen. Police found his bullet-ridden body alongside four other bodies on April 7 on a dirt road outside Barrancabermeja. Rivas hosted a controversial morning program on Radio Calor Estéreo called “Fuerzas Vivas” (Live Forces). In the weeks before his death, he had publicly accused mayor Ardila of corruption and collaboration with members of the AUC.

http://cpj.org/2007/09/colombia-two-politicians-arrested-for-2003-journal.php

[Judi Lynn]

2. Others killed in that contract murder of the reporter. This entire article is worth reading:

Barrancabermeja: Paramilitary Terror
and the Struggle for Colombia’s Oil
by Bill Weinberg, World War 3 Report

~snip~
“Uribe follows the mandates of the International Monetary Fund, and is paving the way for the FTAA… his agenda is to deliver national resources to foreign capital.”

~snip~
Barrancabermeja’s former mayor, Julio Cesar Ardila, has been in hiding since June when he was charged with the murder of radio journalist Juan Emeterio Rivas, who accused him of corruption and links to paramilitary violence. Invited to a party on April 6, Rivas was ambushed; seven youths who accompanied Rivas were also killed as “collateral damage.”

More:
http://www.greens.org/s-r/33/33-15.html

[Jkid]

3. Now he'll finally experence Colombia's

prison's for the first time. Everyone knows that once you're in a Latin American prison, you're on your own.

[Judi Lynn]

4. On your own unless you are a successful criminal! There was a documentary on tv which showed

some of the more powerful people have their own chefs, even. Probably was CBS. Astounding.

Here's an interesting prison in Colombia:

La Catedral was a prison overlooking the city of Medellín in Colombia. The prison was built to specifications ordered by Medellin Cartel leader Pablo Escobar, under agreement with the Colombian government. Escobar would surrender to authorities, serve a maximum term of five years, and the Colombian government would not extradite him to the United States. In addition to the facility being built to Escobar's specifications, he was also given the right to choose who would guard him, believing to have chosen guards only loyal to him. The prison was believed to be designed more to keep out Escobars' enemies from assassination attempts, than to keep Escobar in.<1><2>

The finished prison was often called "Hotel Escobar," or "Club Medellin," due to its amenities. La Catedral featured a soccer field, a giant doll house, a bar, jacuzzi, and a waterfall. Escobar also had a telescope installed that allowed him to look down onto the city of Medellin to his daughter's residence while talking on the phone with her.<1><2>

PBS reports that even though the government was willing to turn a blind eye to Escobar continuing his drug smuggling, the arrangement fell apart when it was reported Escobar brought four of his lieutenants to the La Catedral to be tortured and murdered. The Colombian government decided it had to move Escobar to a standard prison, of which Pablo refused. In July 1992, after serving one year and one month, Pablo would again be on the run. With the Colombian National Army surrounding the facility, it is said Pablo simply walked out the back gate. The ensuing manhunt would employ a 600-man unit, specially trained by the United States Delta Force, named Search Bloc, and led by Colonel Hugo Martinez.<1><2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Catedral

Also:;

August 23, 2006
Doing yard work for the cameras

Whenever you see pictures of powerful, widely feared, millionaire paramilitary leaders being forced to do yard work, you know you're not getting the entire story.

After months of reports of top paramilitaries - men wanted for murder and narcotrafficking - driving armored SUVs, going to discos and swanky restaurants, and shopping in upscale malls, President Uribe ordered last week that they be "conducted" to a facility in La Ceja, south of Medellín. There, they are to await investigation and sentencing to terms of up to eight years in confinement under the "Justice and Peace" law.

By posting these pictures to its website yesterday, the Colombian government's High Commissioner for Peace clearly intends to demonstrate that the eighteen paramilitary leaders so far assembled there are not living in the lap of luxury. Instead of the splendor that Pablo Escobar enjoyed (briefly) in his personal "La Catedral" prison in 1992-93, and instead of the very comfortable conditions that most narcotraffickers in Colombian jails have come to expect, we see pictures of weedy patios, lumpy beds, and unadorned walls. Warlords who have long decided who lives and dies in vast territories, we are told, must now share one computer, and must help to clean up the grounds.

Apparently, we're meant to think that the paramilitary leadership is truly going to spend the next several years in these conditions, doing penance for the thousands of murders that they ordered or committed. This should shake our certainty that the AUC leaders are in fact going to enjoy near-impunity, and should cause us to doubt that they still command powerful criminal networks and have extensive political clout in key regions of the country. In particular, it is no doubt hoped, pictures of paramilitaries roughing it in a penal colony might reduce U.S. pressure to extradite them for drug-trafficking.

Of course, these pictures are probably not accurate representations of the AUC leaders' daily routine. And we can expect their material conditions to improve rapidly, if they haven't already done so since these photos were taken. Nonetheless, let's enjoy these few images. Look at them and imagine what it would be like if some of Colombia's most ruthless and brutal criminals really did have to spend many long years wearing rubber boots, doing chores, sleeping in twin beds and jockeying for a few minutes of computer time...

http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/blog/archives/000300.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~
On edit, a reference to prison conditions for paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso:

First, from the interview with paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso that ran in Saturday’s New York Times, this description of the confessed mass-murderer’s cozy digs in the Itagüí maximum-security prison:

IN his prison cell here on the outskirts of Medellín, Salvatore Mancuso reads Gandhi and self-help books. He taps notes to his lawyers into a BlackBerry. He gazes at photos of his 19-year-old wife and 8-month-old son. He listens to vallenato music on his iPod.

… Under Colombia’s lenient rules, Mr. Mancuso could end up spending much less than eight years in a prison where he is already allowed amenities like satellite television in his cell, bodyguards, visits each weekend from his wife, Margarita, and their son, Salvatore, and a laptop computer with Internet access, said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

http://www.cipcol.org/?p=452