Legal proceedings in cases of murder of journalists at risk with firing of prosecutors

The Colombian Supreme Court has given the current Attorney General, Guillermo Mendoza Diago, two months to fire 2,100 pubic prosecutors who failed to pass an exam and replace them with those who passed it. The action, which is obligatory for the Attorney General’s Office, has an enormous impact on hundreds of legal proceedings, as they will now be passed to other hands, with no guarantee that the new prosecutors are familiar with the case files, running the risk that in many cases the statute of limitations could run out before the officials concerned are able to learn of the relevant issues. There are many legal proceedings that run this risk, among them those concerning money-laundering, drug trafficking and the murder of five journalists, among which is that of Jaime Garzón, that are currently being dealt with by the Attorney General’s Office’s Human Rights Unit, which handles cases of crimes against journalists.