Colombia’s prosecutor general has asked London police to help investigate a former deputy who is accused of complicity in his own kidnapping, local media reported Tuesday.
Residents, politicians, lawyers, teachers, students and entrepreneurs from the Valle de Cauca department sent a signed letter to the Prosecutor General’s Office requesting London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Scotland Yard, collaborate with Colombian authorities in Sigifredo Lopez’s case.
Lopez was the only survivor of 12 deputies from the eastern Valle del Cauca department who were kidnapped by the FARC from the assembly building in April 2002 and assassinated five years later.
The politician and former hostage was arrested last week on suspicion of murder, hostage-taking, perfidy and rebellion in connection with events that began on April 11 2002, when guerrillas of the FARC disguised as soldiers slipped into the state assembly building in Cali and rounded up the deputies, killing a police officer.
Lopez was released in February 2009 and said he survived because he was separated from the others as punishment for arguing with his captors. He said at the time that he owned his survival “to a miracle of God.”