InfoBrief--April 25, 2006

US Current Affairs and Media

• Body of Jaime Gómez Found Near Bogotá; Family Alleges Political AssassinationThe body of Jaime Enrique Gómez, political advisor to Senator Piedad Cordoba and former presidential candidate Horatio Serpa of Colombia’s opposition parties, was found this weekend the Cerro Monsserat above Bogotá. His remains were detected by the dog of a man walking in the park and were brought to the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science by the Section of Judicial Police (Sijin). Gómez’s identity was later confirmed by matching dental records. The official cause of death has not yet been released, but Gómez’s family and human rights groups maintain that this was a political assassination. In a statement in the news magazine Semana, Gómez’s son Juan Sebastián shared his feelings. “We believe this was a political assassination. The circumstances surrounding the recovery of my father’s remains were very strange.” The mountain on which his body was discovered was searched extensively in the fifteen days following his disappearance on March 21, leading some to conclude that he was killed at another location. The case has been turned over to the Fiscalía General (Attorney General), who will conduct the investigation.

  Click here to read the article in Semana

• Office of National Drug Control Policy: Net Coca Cultivation in Colombia Up in 2005The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) announced the most recent numbers on net coca cultivation in Colombia, showing a marked increase from 2004 to 2005. In 2005, net coca cultivation was 144,000 hectares, a 30,000 hectare increase from 2004. This amount exceeds levels from 1999 and 2000—the year before Plan Colombia began and the program’s first year. The ONDCP noted that the area covered to collect data in this report was 81% larger than the area used in 2004, and that as such, “a year-to-year comparison is not possible.” Independent drug policy analysts disagree. The Center for International Policy (CIP) published a report on its website this week, disputing the government’s claims. “Either Colombia has returned to this level of cultivation, or the ‘reductions’ reported in 2002 and 2003 were false due to poor measurement.” CIP insists, “It cannot plausibly be claimed that better measurement would have shown coca-growing to be twice as extensive – 288,000 hectares – in 1999 and 2000. A dozen years of aerial herbicide fumigation in Colombia has shown one thing clearly: spraying people who have no other economic alternatives is effective only at reducing coca- growing in a specific zone for a specific period of time.” These new numbers show that Colombia still has a long way to go if it hopes to achieve its goal of reducing net coca cultivation in the country by 50% in six years.

  Click here to read the ONDCP memo