Former Colombian senator and hostage negotiator Piedad Cordoba claimed that she is the target of an assasination plot Wednesday.
“It is an assassination scheme that is very well designed and very well organized in terms of technology,” Cordoba said.
“We are greatly concerned about the plan to assassinate Piedad Cordoba, but there have also been threats from the Black Eagles and the Rastrojos [neo-paramilitary groups] towards human rights organizations,” said Olga Amparo Sanches, a member of Cordoba’s human rights group, Colombians for Peace.
Cordoba wants the government to ensure the safety of high-ranking officials and increase security measures.
“The government must guarantee us life and must safeguard our right to form organizations to participate in politics and to seek peace,” the former senator said.
Andres Villamizar, the director of Colombia’s National Protection Agency, responded to Cordoba’s request, saying “she can have absolute confidence that officials will receive protection and support for their work from the Colombian state.”
He added that the government is open to altering security measures offered to Cordoba if she feels changes are necessary.
The murder plot was allegedly hatched by a group of residents of Turmeque, a town in northern Colombia, responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of human rights defenders,” according to Cordoba.
“Paramilitarism is not over in Colombia,” she added.
Cordoba, who helped to negotiate the April release of 10 hostages held by the FARC, said that Colombians for Peace will not mediate the release of captured French journalist Romeo Langlois.
The reporter was taken into FARC captivity April 28 when he was wounded in a firefight between the FARC and the army platoon he was embedded with. The Frenchman was filming a documentary on counternarcotics operations for news network France 24.