_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Colombia_______________
Rebels target cardinal
Government thwarts assassination plans
In September, Colombian government officials uncovered a plot by a rebel
guerrilla force to assassinate Cardinal
Pedro Rubiano Sáenz, along with a
leading presidential candidate.
The Administrative Department of Security (DAS), an elite Colombian military unit, announced the discovery of the plans by the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A small urban cell of FARC rebels was making final plans to kill Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a candidate for the presidential election, and the Bogota archbishop, who has been an outspoken critic of FARC’s terror campaign.
The discovery came when DAS raided a home in southern Bogota which was being used as a “safe house” for FARC guerrillas. Four men were arrested, and the Colombian soldiers found two Bibles which had been rigged as bombs.
“Both of the Bibles were already filled with explosives, which were supposed to be set off by a remote-control device,” said a DAS spokesman. He also said that documents confiscated from the FARC’s urban cell “clearly show that the two targets were Cardinal Rubiano and Álvaro Uribe.” The document also specified the time and place for the terror attacks, DAS reported: the Bible for Uribe was meant to be delivered to his office in Bogota, while the one for Cardinal Rubiano would have been sent to his residence.
Catholic nun killed
Paramilitary group charged
Late in September, a Catholic nun involved in human-rights work was shot and
killed in the town of Tumaco. Sister
Yolanda Ceron
directed a Catholic
human-rights office in the town on Colombia’s Pacific coast.
The London-based human-rights organization Amnesty International charged that the killing had been carried out at the instigation of a right-wing paramilitary group that has previously targeted other human-rights workers in Colombia. “There’s no doubt that Sister Yolanda was killed for her work in the defense of human rights,” Amnesty International said, attributing the murder to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
Amnesty International said that Sister Ceron was working to help people who had been victimized by government soldiers or paramilitary fighters. The group criticized the government for failing to take sufficient actions against the paramilitary organizations that are known to be expanding their influence in Tumaco, some 325 miles southwest of Bogota.
Missionary priest kidnapped,
released
Captured on dangerous highway
A Slovakian Divine Word missionary was kidnapped on a notorious stretch of
highway in Colombia late in September.
Father Pavol Sochulak had been serving for two years in one of Colombia’s poorest regions, Vigia del Fuerte. According to Father Noel Rebacos, a spokesman for the Divine Word missionary order, Father Sochulak was abducted when armed men stopped the bus on which he was traveling along the highway linking Medellin and Bogota. That road has become notorious as the site of attacks and kidnappings.
The Cuban-backed National Liberation Army (ELN) was believed to be responsible for the kidnapping. The ELN is the second-largest rebel army in the country’s 37-year civil war. The ELN relies heavily on kidnapping, and the collection of ransom payments, to fund its continuing struggle. Last year there were 4,000 people kidnapped in Colombia.
The ELN has shown a special penchant for kidnapping foreigners, in the expectation that their families or sponsoring agencies will pay ransom without haggling. In the past five years, Colombia has seen four foreign visitors kidnapped during an average month.
Father Sochulak was released by the ELN less than a week after his abduction. Spokesmen for the Divine Word order would not comment on whether or not a ransom had been paid.
Back to Catholic World Report November 2001 Table of Contents