EQUIPO NIZKOR |
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07Oct07
Reporter flees Colombia for death threats
A foreign correspondent in Colombia has fled the country after being criticised by President Alvaro Uribe over a book and receiving death threats.
Mr Uribe accused Gonzalo Guillen of being "a professional slanderer". In the space of three days Mr Guillen said he received 24 death threats.
Colombia is one of the most dangerous places for a journalist to operate.
Drug cartels, Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries all seek to head off negative coverage.
Mr Guillen has been a correspondent for the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald for eight years.
He received death threats after Mr Uribe accused him of being behind a book written by Virginia Vallejo, the mistress of the now dead drug lord Pablo Escobar.
In the book entitled Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, it is alleged that Mr Uribe had close ties to the head of the Medellin drug cartel.
Speaking about the book and its claims on a local station, Mr Uribe, who has repeatedly denied any ties to Escobar, said:
"Behind this lady is Gonzalo Guillen who has dedicated his journalistic career to infamy and lies."
Mr Guillen flatly rejected Mr Uribe's claims.
"He [Mr Uribe] says that it was I who wrote the book by Virginia Vallejo and that what is said in that book about him was written by me. I did not write that," he said.
"But he said this with the intention of defaming me, injuring me and to put me in danger. He did this in bad faith and without any valid argument and without any basis to say what he was saying."
Journalists under threat
Mr Guillen said Mr Uribe was angry about a book that he published earlier this year called The Confidants of Pablo Escobar.
It claimed that the Uribe family had ties to organised crime, allegations which first surfaced in 1991 in a US intelligence document.
"Ever since Uribe came out defaming me and accusing me, I have been sought after by the hit men of Colombia, and there are a lot of them in Colombia," Mr Guillen said.
"In three days, I have received 24 death threats."
The government has not commented on Mr Guillen's departure, but the BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Bogota says the threats are being taken seriously.
More than 40 journalists have been killed in Colombia over the last 15 years.
[Source: BBC News Service, London, UK, 07oct07]
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