The organization protests threats to another reporter
Miami (September 9, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today urged the Colombian Attorney General’s Office to guarantee due process in the case of journalist William Parra Jaimes who has been accused of rebellion, conspiring to commit crime and financing terrorist activities.
On Sept. 6 the Bogota office issued a warrant for the arrest of Parra, former correspondent for the international television network Telesur, on charges of being linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla movement. The charge resulted from messages found on the computer of late guerrilla-chief Raúl Reyes that allegedly tie Parra to negotiations for weapons for the FARC.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, said, “We will follow the development of this case closely and trust that due process will be observed and the truth will become clear.”
Parra, who currently resides in Venezuela, issued a statement declaring his innocence and complaining that he had not been treated fairly. He explained that despite many requests to the Attorney General’s Office he has not had access to the alleged evidence against him, adding that he will demand due process and his right to a defense which, he said, have been violated by the Attorney General’s Office’s Terrorism Unit.
On another note journalist Luis Carlos Cervantes, a correspondent of Teleantioquia Noticias television in Tarazá, in the northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia, has received multiple threats since August 30th, the most recent giving him 72 hours to leave town on Sept. 3rd.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, condemned the threats, saying “they obstruct the free practice of journalism,” and he called on the judiciary and the police ”to provide the necessary protection.”
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org
