A man who order the kidnapping and murder of his own girlfriend by ELN rebels has been sentenced to 55 years in prison, reported Colombian media on Tuesday.
A court in the capital Bogota has found Edison Mayorga guilty of planning the kidnapping and murder of his girlfriend Viviana Bernal in the town of Fortul, Arauca in March 2012. The victim, a 22 year-old Foreign Trade student at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, was found dead with seven bullet wounds.
The prosecution “presented abundant evidence and testimony, including that of Oscar Hernando Rodriguez and Luis Fernando Franco, who participated in the same crimes and were sentenced to 42 and 21 years in prison respectively. These two recognized Edison Mayorga as the person who devised the kidnapping of the university student,” reported El Pais.
During the trial, the prosecution stated that Mayorga, boyfriend of the victim, had planned the kidnapping and the need to kill her because she knew who had ordered her initial kidnapping.
Prosecutors found that the defendant organized the kidnapping by persuading his girlfriend to visit a farm in the city of Villavicencio, where she was kidnapped and then handed over to the ELN.
Soon after, the rebels asked the girl’s father for $1.5 million ransom. Of that money, according to police, the ex-boyfriend of the girl was due to receive a third. “Mayorga fled and took refuge in Gigante, in the home of his new partner. There he was captured two years ago.”
With this the number of convictions for this murder comes to five.