Latinnews Archive
Andean Group - 12 April 1990
Cartel blamed for Jaramillo's murder; UP DROPS OUT OF PRESIDENTIAL RACE, INTERIOR MINISTER QUITS
The leftist Union Patriotica (UP) has said it will not be participating in the 27 May presidential elections following the assassination on 22 March of its presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa, who was gunned down by a 16-year-old contract killer at Bogota's international airport.
In announcing its withdrawal from the electoral campaign, the UP demanded the resignation of interior minister Carlos Lemos Simmons. Party leaders claimed that statements made by Lemos two days before Jaramillo's murder had given the political go-ahead to sicarios to kill the leftist leader. Jaramillo himself had said the minister's remarks were a 'sentence of death' for leaders of the UP coalition, which, since it was formed, has had 1,044 of its members murdered (including Jaramillo's predecessor, judge Jaime Pardo Leal, who was shot dead in October 1987 -- RA-87-09).
* 'Indignant' Lemos resigns
Lemos had said that the UP was the political arm of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc). The UP did grow out of peace agreements between the government and Farc in 1984. But it has since distanced itself from the guerrillas and condemned their acts of violence.
Lemos tendered his resignation on 25 March, saying he was 'indignant' because President Virgilio Barco and his government had not defended him against the UP's accusations. In fact, without referring to the minister by name, in a personal letter to UP leader Diego Montana, sent the day after Jaramillo's murder, Barco described as 'unacceptable' allegations that the UP had links with the guerrillas and their terrorist activities.
Barco was quick to accept Lemos's resignation, appointing former attorney-general Horacio Serpa Uribe as the new interior minister.
* Medellin cartel suspected
At the end of March, the question remained: who was behind Jaramillo's murder?
An anonymous caller told Radio Caracol that the Medellin cartel was responsible. 'The attack,' said the caller, 'was carried out by the Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha commando in Bogota.' Rodriguez Gacha was the cartel's military chieftain, ambushed and killed by an elite police unit last December (RA-90-01). The caller said that, because the government had failed to respond to its pleas for peace, the cartel had resumed attacks against politicians and officials. The next victim, he said, would be the Liberal party's presidential candidate, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo.
* Escobar denies blame
Defence minister Oscar Botero and General Miguel Maza Marquez, head of the DAS, agreed in attributing Jaramillo's murder to Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar.
Escobar issued a communique denying that he had anything to do with the murder. He insisted that he had no reason for wanting Jaramillo dead, noting that the leftist leader had consistently opposed the extradition of drug traffickers to the US and had even suggested at one point that a dialogue with the drug traffickers would be productive.
* 'Rambo' has motives
Some have suggested that responsibility for Jaramillo's murder lies with another drugs kingpin, Fidel Castano (Rambo), who operates on Colombia's Atlantic coast.
Castano, who is based in Cordoba department, was linked with the November 1988 massacre of 43 townspeople in Segovia, a UP stronghold, and is suspected of having ordered the 'disappearance' in February of 38 peasants in the Uruba region.
He has been engaged in a personal vendetta against anyone connected with the Communist party (a member of the UP) or the Farc ever since Farc guerrillas abducted his father in the early 1980s. Ransom was paid, but Castano's father died of a heart attack before the guerrillas managed to release him.
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