(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed concern about the fate of Julien Fouchet, a 27-year-old French law student in Bogotá and freelance contributor to Radio Nova, whose disappearance in northern Colombia more than a month ago was officially confirmed by the French embassy in Bogotá on 18 February 2004. The organisation urged the Colombian authorities to […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed concern about the fate of Julien Fouchet, a 27-year-old French law student in Bogotá and freelance contributor to Radio Nova, whose disappearance in northern Colombia more than a month ago was officially confirmed by the French embassy in Bogotá on 18 February 2004.
The organisation urged the Colombian authorities to do everything possible to find Fouchet.
There has been no word of Fouchet since he went missing in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range on 15 January. Located near the Caribbean coast, 1,000 kilometres north of the capital, the mountain range boasts indigenous archaeological sites but is also the refuge of armed groups and drug traffickers.
According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, Fouchet wanted to establish contact with National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN) guerrillas in the Sierra Nevada.
Since 1997, about 80 journalists have been kidnapped or detained by Colombia’s two main guerrilla groups, the ELN and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC). An American and a British journalist were kidnapped by the ELN in January 2003 (see IFEX alerts of 4 February, 29 and 24 January 2003).
Fouchet’s parents have gone to Colombia to seek more information about the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.
