An investigation conducted by the IAPAs Rapid Response Unit concluded that the Colombian Attorney General dismissed testimonies that linked the military to Garzons murder and only considered evidence against Carlos Castaño, head of the paramilitary group, United Self-Defenders of Colombia (AUC, for its Spanish acronym), as the person who ordered the murder, and against hit man, Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo, who carried out the crime.
Garzón, 39 years old, was murdered in Bogotá, on August 13, 1999, as he was going to work at the Radionet radio station. The two hit men were riding a motorcycle when they ambushed him and fired shots.
During his final years, Garzón combined his work as a journalist with negotiations for the release of kidnapped hostages and with the internal peace process. As a result, several sectors in Colombia, among them the military, questioned Garzons ties to guerrilla groups, while the AUC had declared him a "military target." Garzón also had discovered that a military group in Bogotá was selling weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, for its Spanish acronym).
An IAPA report on the Garzón case, whose full text can be found at www.impunidad.com, coincided with other investigations done by local civic groups, in establishing that Castaño and Ortiz Agudelo were not the only ones involved.
Rafael Molina, Ahora magazine, Dominican Republic,
Chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, declared
that "the Attorney General should guarantee that there is a fair trial
and that all leads be investigated so that this murder does not remain only
partially solved or in complete impunity."
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