Colombia / Americas

Bogotá, Colombia, September 11, 2015–A Colombian journalist was shot dead on Thursday in front of the radio station where she worked, according to news reports. Flor Alba Núñez Vargas had received threats in connection with her reporting, a local journalist told the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Bogotá, June 25, 2015 – A Colombian court sentenced the mastermind of a journalist’s murder to 36 years in prison on Wednesday in a landmark conviction that followed years of lobbying for justice by local journalists.

Bogotá, June 4, 2015–The Colombian attorney general’s office announced Monday that charges have been dropped against Alejandro Cárdenas Orozco, a paramilitary fighter who confessed to taking part in the 2000 kidnapping of Colombian journalist Jineth Bedoya, who was also raped in the attack, according to news reports. Cárdenas later retracted his confession, according to reports.

Although Colombian journalists are frequently threatened by Marxist guerrillas, criminal gangs, and corrupt politicians trying to silence them, two recent cases that created widespread concern–including alerts from CPJ–were fabricated by the very reporters who claimed to have been targeted.

Bogotá, May 1, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the sentencing on Thursday by the Colombian Supreme Court of two former senior government officials for their roles in an illegal surveillance program. The program, which occurred while former President Álvaro Uribe was in office, involved spying on some of the country’s most prominent journalists as…

Bogotá, March 16, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a threat made against Colombian newspaper columnist Ana Cristina Restrepo Jiménez and calls on authorities to hold the perpetrator to account.

New York, March 3, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder of Colombian radio journalist Edgar Quintero and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate all motives and hold the killers to account. Quintero is the second journalist to have been killed in fewer than three weeks in Colombia.

Bogotá, February 18, 2015–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the murder on Saturday of a Colombian radio station owner and calls on authorities to identify the motive and ensure the perpetrators are held to account. Luis Antonio Peralta Cuéllar was a journalist and an aspiring politician who often broadcast reports criticizing political corruption in the…