Fifteen people were assassinated in Medellín over the weekend, local
police say. According to the authorities, the wave of murders is a
retaliation of the arrest of a paramilitary leader last week.
Although violence had been soaring in Medellín, it has not been since the 1990’s when Pablo Escobar ruled the underworld of Colombia’s second largest city, Medellín had seen so many murders over just two nights.
Local authorities imposed strict security measures on the capital of Antioquia in February already to halt the soaring number of assassinations and to assure there were no irregularities during the summit of the Inter-American Development Bank the end of March.
Despite the rigid security measures, ‘sicarios’ (hitmen) this weekend took the lives of what Police say were fifteen members of the gang of ‘Sebastian’, a paramilitary leader formerly under the command of the extradited AUC boss Carlos Mario ‘Macaco’ Jiménez.
Police say the assassination was a show of force of members of the gang of Fabio Edison ‘Riñon’ Gómez Ruis, alleged member of paramilitary organization the Office of Envigado who, according to police, had seventy percent of the city’s sicarios under his command and was arrested in Barranquilla a
The most serious of assassinations took place in a house in the central neighborhood of Tejol. Five others there were injured. In Belén Rincón the assassins followed their victims into a church and shot them there.