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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, 19 April 1998

Rights Attorney Killed in Colombia
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By Javier Baena

BOGOTA -- In the third slaying of a leading Colombian human rights 
activist in less than two months, an attorney who gained prominence 
defending guerrilla leaders was killed in his office with two shots to 
the head by assassins posing as journalists. 

Eduardo Umana Mendoza, 50, was surprised in his central Bogota 
office on Saturday by two men and a women who tied up his 
secretary, police said. The killers, one of whom carried a video 
camera, posed as a television crew to gain entrance.

The government offered a $370,000 reward for information leading 
to the capture of those who killed Umana, a leading defender of 
arrested guerrillas and other leftist activists.

His most important recent case was representing leaders of the 
national oil workers union charged with conspiring with leftist rebels 
to blow up oil pipelines.

The union's president, Hernando Hernandez, said he had no doubt the 
shooting was the work of a right-wing paramilitary death squad. ``He 
was under threat by those groups,'' Hernandez said at the scene as 
police removed the body.

Hernandez said the union, known by its Spanish initials USO, would 
stage a 24-hour strike on Monday to protest the killing. 

Umana was killed a day after a gunman surprised a Colombian 
Communist Party activist at her door, killing Maria Arango with 
multiple gunshots. Arango, 60, was a human rights activist and 
founder of a communist youth group.

German Umana told reporters that his brother was killed ``for the 
same reason Maria Arango was killed, because so many people who 
want peace and respect for human rights in this country are 
murdered.'' 

National police chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano said in a television 
interview that both killings had ``similar details.'' 

On Feb. 27, gunmen killed Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo in his Medellin 
office with two shots to the head after tying up his secretary. The 
53-year-old human rights activist had accused the army and high-
ranking politicians of sponsoring death squads.

Human rights workers are under constant threat in Colombia. Last 
year, Amnesty International closed its office in the country because 
of death threats.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press