A Colombian judge sentence the mayor of Curillo, a municipality in the Caqueta department, to 40 years in prison for ordering the murder of journalist Hernando Salas Rojas in 2009, reports ABC.
Elber Parra Cuellar was sentenced to 42 years for carrying out the murder under the orders of Mayor Esneider Mayorga Corrales. Investigators established that the killing was committed with an automatic pistol which had been given to Parra by the mayor.
“The crime was committed because Salas Rojas led a movement to revoke the mandate of Mayorga,” said the prosecution.
The journalist was murdered on May 20 2009 at his home in Curillo in front of his wife and child.
NGO Reporters Without Borders’ annual index on press freedom, released Wednesday, ranked Colombia 145th out of 178 countries analyzed.
Three journalists have been killed in Colombia since the beginning of 2010, according to statistics from The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a watchdog NGO focused on freedom of the press.
Reporters are often targeted when they investigate corruption, human rights abuses, and other illegal activity such as drug trafficking. Clodomiro Castilla, a journalist murdered in March in the Cordoba department, had been investigating links between paramilitary groups and the local business elite.
