(FLIP/IFEX) – Journalist Claudia Julieta Duque has been forced to seek exile outside of Colombia as a result of repeated threats and the failure of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to sufficiently advance the investigation into the threats to the degree warranted by the seriousness of the case. On 17 November 2004, at 7:52 p.m. (local […]
(FLIP/IFEX) – Journalist Claudia Julieta Duque has been forced to seek exile outside of Colombia as a result of repeated threats and the failure of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to sufficiently advance the investigation into the threats to the degree warranted by the seriousness of the case.
On 17 November 2004, at 7:52 p.m. (local time), Duque received a call on her mobile phone. The caller asked if he was speaking with Claudia Julieta, the mother of Alejandra. When Duque said yes, the caller told her, “Bitch, it pains me to have to inform you that you have left us no other option than to kill your daughter . . . Your daughter is going to suffer, we are going to burn her alive, we are going to scatter her fingers around the house.”
Since it was registered on her mobile phone display, Duque was able to obtain the telephone number of the caller. According to the lawyer’s collective with whom Duque works, when the number was called, a man who identified himself as “Alex” responded. The director of the National Police’s Human Rights Unit, Colonel Novoa, told FLIP that they have investigated and identified the person to whom the telephone number is registered. The police have also investigated the origin of several vehicles whose occupants, according to the journalist, have been following her. They have found that the descriptions of the vehicles that the journalist has seen do not correspond to the registration information held by the authorities.
In a 25 November meeting, Novoa provided the information the police had obtained to Elba Beatriz Silva, the director of the Human Rights Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. During the meeting, Silva told Duque that her case had been transferred to another branch of the Public Prosecutor’s Office three days earlier. This transfer, in practical terms, would indicate that the Public Prosecutor’s Office did not consider the case to be freedom of expression related, since Silva’s department only investigates cases of human rights violations. On 26 November, however, the Public Prosecutor’s Office transferred the case back to its Human Rights Department and Duque was allowed to add new information to the complaint she had previously filed.
Duque began to receive threats and notice individuals following her immediately after she initiated an investigation into possible irregularities in the case of journalist and humorist Jaime Garzón, who was assassinated in August 1999.
Since then, Duque has been urging the authorities to identify and bring to justice those responsible for the harassment and threats against her. To date, the authorities have failed to do so.
FLIP urges the Public Prosecutor’s Office to continue its investigation into Duque’s case. The organisation also calls on the Administrative Department of Security (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, DAS) to ensure that the internal investigation into DAS members’ possible involvement in the threats is carried out in a thorough manner.
