LatinNews Daily Report - 14 October 2013

POLITICS | Colombian governor arrested. On 12 October the governor of the northern department of La Guajira, José Francisco Gómez Cerchar, known locally as ‘Kiko Gómez’, was arrested on charges of murder and collaboration with right-wing paramilitaries. According to Colombia’s deputy attorney general, Jorge Perdomo, Gómez is accused of responsibility for the murder in 1997 of a Barrancas town councillor, Luis López Peralta, as well as that of two local citizens, Luis Alejandro Rodríguez and Rosa Mercedes Cabrera, in 2000. He is also accused of links to Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias ‘Jorge 40’, commander of the (now defunct) right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), and other paramilitary groups active in the region. Days earlier the attorney general’s office accused Gómez of irregularities in the awarding of contracts, while a journalist, Claudia López, who subsequently fled Colombia, alleged links between  Gómez and Marquitos Figueroa, the leader of an emerging criminal organisation (Bacrim). Gómez, who was twice mayor of Barrancas ((1995-1997 and 2001-2003), was elected governor in 2011 for the Cambio Radical party, which expelled him on 11 October. His court hearing has been scheduled for 30 October in Bogotá.