New York, Feb. 15, 2000---CPJ is deeply concerned about the
safety of Guillermo Cortés, editorial director of "Hora Cero,"
a nightly television news program broadcast on Canal A in Bogotá,
who was kidnapped on January 22 and remains missing. While no one
has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, new evidence points
to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia¹s largest
guerrilla group.
Cortés, a highly respected journalist known to his colleagues
as "La Chiva" (Scoop), was kidnapped by six armed men from his weekend
home in Choachí, in the mountains southeast of Bogotá. The
region is a known FARC stronghold. According to the caretaker of Cortés'
property and a neighbor, who were both present at the time of the
kidnapping, the kidnappers identified themselves as members of FARC
and said they were abducting Cortés in order to send a message
to the government.
On January 29, at the start of a weekend-long ceremony inaugurating
the headquarters for the peace negotiations in the hamlet of Los Pozos
in the rebel-held San Vicente del Caguán Municipality, FARC
leader Manuel Marulanda told the press they had been unfair to his
group and would have to pay. But he denied responsibility for Cortés'
kidnapping. During a subsequent press conference held on February
9 in Stockholm (where government and rebel peace negotiators had traveled
to study Sweden's economic and social structure), FARC commander Raúl
Reyes denied that his group had played any role in the kidnapping.
On February 2, the local press reported that Colombia's military intelligence
service had intercepted a telephone conversation believed to be between
FARC leader Henry Castellanos Garzón, alias "Romaña,"
and another FARC member, identified only as "Karina 15." In the conversation,
Karina 15 apparently gave the kidnapped journalist's address and detailed
his financial assets, including a Jeep Cherokee, an apartment, and
shares in a company.
This report bolsters the theory that one of the two FARC fronts active
in the Choachí area (fronts 53 and 54) was responsible for the kidnapping.
Many local journalists speculate that Cortés was kidnapped
for economic rather than political motives.
On February 6, some 2,000 protesters gathered in Choachí to protest
Cortés' kidnapping. Cortés' colleagues told CPJ that
they feared for the health of the 73-year-old journalist because of
the harsh conditions and cold temperatures prevailing near Choachí,
where he is believed to be held.
CPJ urges whoever is holding the reporter to release him immediately
and without conditions of any kind.
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