The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has issued a news alert detailing another apparent death threat against a Colombian journalist, this time against Herbin Hoyos Medina, who works for Caracol Radio in the capital Bogotá.
On the first of July he interviewed some accused drug traffickers who were being held in a maximum security prison awaiting extradition to the United States, who had accused Colombian and U.S. authorities of setting them up. Later that day a message was posted on his website from an unknown group accusing him of protecting criminals and threatening his young family with “consequences without precedent” unless he left the country within three days.
Although Medina remained in the country and the threat wasn’t carried through, he is still thinking about leaving. It would not be the first time either. He left the country for short periods in between 1998 and 2000 after receiving threats from guerrilla groups due to his reports on kidnapping and was given a permanent police bodyguard in 2002.
The Colombian based Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP) issued a report at the end of June citing 46 cases of threats against journalists in Colombia for the first half of this year.
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