Impunity - Colombia
IMPUNITY-COLOMBIA
WHEREAS
in September 1996, a Bogotá tribunal unexpectedly ordered the release of four persons who had been found guilty of planning and executing the murder of El Espectador publisher Guillermo Cano Izasa authorities have failed to arrest one of the accused, Luis Carlos Molina Yépes, a businessman and former confidant of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, who was able to escape from police custody in 1989 and has never been recaptured the decision to release the prisoners was done in the most irregular manner, effectively closing the case and not pursuing the arrest of Molina Yépes who continues to move freely around the city of Medallion, where he lives
a Barranquilla high court decided to release three suspects charged in the murder of Carlos Lajúd Catalán, a radio reporter killed in Barranquilla on April19, 1993
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES
to ask the attorney general's office to open an investigation into the irregular decision to release the four prisoners, taking into consideration the possibility of payoffs or other irregularities to request the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad and other Colombian police to enforce an arrest warrant that remains pending against Luis Carlos Molina Yépes
to urge the attorney general's office to transfer the new investigation of the Lajúd case to a Bogotá court, and to investigate the reasons for the legal proceedings to drag out for three years without moving against those who may have hired the killers to urge the attorney general's office also to investigate death threats made against relatives of Lajúd
and to look further into the charges of corruption in the grant of municipal contracts that might have involved former government officials.