Reporting from Corozal, Colombia -- Community organizer Carmelo Agamez has spent five months in jail and still has not seen the evidence against him, been told who his accuser is or been notified of a trial date. Welcome to justice, Colombia style.
Facing what he says is a laughable charge of consorting with right-wing paramilitary leaders, the lifelong socialist says he has been thrown arbitrarily into the maw of Colombian justice.
In a jailhouse interview in northern Sucre state, Agamez said the real reason he was arrested was that he was organizing displaced Afro-Colombians in the town of San Onofre. That angered powerful interests trying to assemble abandoned lands for cattle, lumber and oil-drilling projects, he said.
"I was bringing social help to people who were asserting claims for their land and this caught someone's attention," Agamez, who heads the local chapter of the National Movement of Victims of Crimes of State, said Monday. "People who didn't dare speak were starting to get rid of the fear they felt."
Colombian prosecutors did not respond to a request for an interview.
Colombian and U.S. human rights organizations have rallied around the 60-year-old activist, saying he is an example of how community leaders here are sometimes jailed and charged with "rebellion" or "paramilitarism" to discredit them and intimidate others.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-leftist2-2009apr02,0,3559772.story