Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo Assassinated

                  By Frank Bajak
                  Associated Press Writer
                  Friday, February 27, 1998; 10:05 p.m. EST

                  BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Gunmen burst into an office
                  Friday and shot to death a leading human rights
                  activist who had accused the army and top politicians
                  of sponsoring death squads.

                  Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo, 53, was slain in the
                  frugal downtown Medellin office where he practiced law,
                  police and colleagues said.

                  One of the few Colombian human rights workers bold
                  enough to publicly accuse the military and top regional
                  politicians of sponsoring paramilitary groups
                  responsible for thousands of killings over the past
                  decade, Valle had casually remarked in an interview
                  with The Associated Press last October that he expected
                  to be killed soon.

                  ``My days are numbered,'' Valle said with a resigned
                  smile in his book-lined office. ``I've had a good
                  life.''

                  The country's leading human rights organization, The
                  Colombian Commission of Jurists, said it suspected
                  landowner-backed paramilitary groups in the killing.

                  Valle was the most prominent Colombian activist slain
                  since the May 19 slaying of Elsa Alvarado and her
                  husband, Mario, in Bogota.

                  ``This is a death that should really shake up the
                  country,'' said Ricardo Mejia, an activist and friend
                  of Valle reached by telephone at the slain lawyer's
                  office in the capital of Antioquia state, one of
                  Colombia's most violent.

                  Defense Minister Gilberto Echeverri deplored the
                  slaying and called Valle a ``champion of peace.''

                  But Mejia said no local politicians had publicly
                  lamented the death. Valle was especially critical of
                  Antioquia's former governor, Alvaro Uribe Velez, for
                  allowing what he called the proliferation of citizen
                  vigilante groups.

                  A founder of Antioquia's Human Rights Commission, Valle
                  alleged that ``a part of the military is in cahoots
                  with drug traffickers and paramilitaries.'' His
                  allegations were backed by prosecutors in recent months
                  who say military commanders turned a blind eye to a
                  series of massacres by paramilitary gunmen that they
                  could have stopped.

                  More than a dozen leading Medellin human rights
                  activists were slain in the late 1980s and early 1990s
                  and Valle was one of a few who continued to maintain a
                  high public profile.

                           © Copyright 1998 The Associated Press