Death Squad Denies Hit On Ex-Colombian Official

Reuters
16 September 1999
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BOGOTA -- An ultra-right death squad Thursday denied responsibility for the murder of a former Colombian peace commissioner and instead blamed the killing on its Marxist rebel rivals.

Jesus Bejarano, 53, an ex-government official who played a key role in peace talks with guerrilla groups in the early 1990s, was shot dead minutes before teaching an economics class at Bogota's National University Wednesday evening.

His death came a month after Colombia's best-loved comic and political activist Jaime Garzon was slain by two unidentified gunmen.

The two high profile assassinations were set against the backdrop of a surge in the long-running civil conflict that has claimed more than 35,000 lives in just 10 years.

Student witnesses said Bejarano's killers, who used a .765 caliber semi-automatic, said before fleeing that they were members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an illegal, nationwide paramilitary alliance.

But in a brief communiqu De issued Thursday, the right-wing AUC accused the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America's largest surviving 1960s rebel army, of assassinating Bejarano.

``The FARC have once again attacked the Right and will continue attacking in an effort to escape from the drive for peace that they find themselves trapped in thanks to the efforts of honest Colombian and foreigners,'' said the statement, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

President Andres Pastrana launched peace talks with the FARC in January but the rebels unilaterally suspended negotiations in July after refusing to allow a team of international observers to oversee the process.

Despite experience negotiating with guerrillas under former President Cesar Gaviria, Bejarano, Bogota's former ambassador to El Salvador, played no direct role in Pastrana's peace process with the FARC.

Bejarano publicly criticized the president for failing to get a grip on the peace process, and for granting too many concessions to the rebels and allowing military top brass to dictate certain conditions.

Pastrana, however, condemned the killing and described it as ``a harsh blow for all Colombians who have embarked on the search for peace.''

Bejarano gained a reputation as a moderate left-leaning intellectual but was also former chairman of the staunchly right-wing Colombian Farmers' Association (SAC), which represents the country's most-powerful landowners.

Citing unnamed intelligence service sources, the leading El Tiempo newspaper, indicated Bejarano's killing could have been a revenge attack by leftist gunmen for murder in August of Jaime Garzon.

In August, however, Congressman Antonio Navarro Wolff, former ideologue of the defunct M-19 rebel group, said he believed Garzon's death marked the start of a wave of high-profile killings of political personalities by right-wing extremists. The aim of the strategy, he said, was to scupper the peace process with the increasingly powerful rebels.

Students held a vigil over Bejarano's coffin at the National University Thursday and he was due to be buried Friday in his home town of Ibague in central Tolima province.