Carlos Lozano, editor of the leftist weekly magazine “La Voz,” said “a credible source” revealed there is a $200,000 bounty on his head.
Lozano said that Daniel Rendon Herrera, alias “Don Mario,” the jailed founder of right-wing neo-paramilitary group “Los Urabeños,” ordered his assassination “soon.”
A January article in weekly magazine Semana claimed Don Mario continues to run the drug trafficking organization from his Bogota prison cell, where he has been since his 2009 capture.
“I need to warn the criminals who ordered my assassination, you do not intimidate me. They cannot silence me,” said Lozano.
The journalist is also a member of former Senator Piedad Cordoba‘s humanitarian group, Colombians for Peace. Cordoba and other members of the peace organization have been the recent targets of alleged neo-paramilitary assassination plots.
Lozano pinned some of the blame on government officials — including President Juan Manuel Santos — for exacerbating anti-leftist sentiments by suggesting that the country’s newest political party, the National Patriotic Council (CPN), has ties with the FARC.
The CPN grew out of Colombia’s “Patriotic March,” a leftist movement that is supported by many social and political organizations and prominent liberal politicians like Cordoba and House Representative Ivan Cepeda.
“These desperate acts of terrorism by narco-paramilitaries are stimulated by visceral statements from senior government officials and members of the military leadership who point to the Patriotic March as an agent of subversion and an ally of the FARC,” said Lozano.
The National Patriotic Council, formed in April, joined already existing leftist parties like the Polo Democratico and the Progressive Movement led by Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro.
