Sentenced to Death of Mayor Paramilitary Who Reported Criminal Plan

Sentenced to death of mayor paramilitary who reported criminal plan

A paramilitary leader accused of multiple crimes in Colombia was sentenced in absentia to 40 years and three months in prison for the murder of a mayor who had complained publicly that he would be killed, judicial sources said.

A criminal judge in the Caribbean city of Sincelejo found responsible “String”, alias Rodrigo Antonio Mercado, of the crimes of aggravated homicide and kidnapping, said the Attorney General in a statement on the decision released in Bogota.

The ruling is the second in the same case against the crime involved in Eudaldo Diaz, mayor of El Roble, Sucre population, that department is Sincelejo capital.

Diaz’s case received a large circulation in the country’s media because the same officer had told the now former president Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010) was to be killed.

Diaz did the February 3, 2003, during a government meeting in Sucre Uribe led and which was present in the region then governor, Salvador Arana, later appointed as ambassador to Chile.

“I will kill,” said then the mayor, who said among the authors of the plan for Arana, and sentenced in 2009 to 40 years in prison for the same crime and its links with paramilitaries.

The mayor of El Roble was found dead on the outskirts of Sincelejo, the April 10, 2003, five days after she disappeared mysteriously.

The perpetrators of the murder was attributed to the missing block Heroes of Montes de Maria, of the dissolved Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

This block was in charge of Market, whose whereabouts have been unknown since 2005, when the AUC in advancing the peace process with the Uribe government that ended the following year with the disarmament of over 31,000 members of the organization. EFE