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R/£ Colombian governor's throat slit after kidnap blamed on Farc rebels
December 24, 2009 Edition 1
FRANK BAJAK
BOGOTA: At the end of a day of anguish and frustration, President Alvaro Uribe soberly told Colombians that kidnappers had slit the throat of a southern governor during the country's first major political abduction since he took office in 2002.
The slaying of Caqueta state governor Luis Francisco Cuellar underlined the threat still posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), despite years of being battered by the country's US-backed military.
Farc did not immediately claim responsibility for the kidnapping, but the organisation has a history of staging publicity-grabbing attacks during the Christmas holidays.
"In the midst of pain, we reiterate today all our determination to defeat these terrorists," Uribe said in a televised speech to the nation on Tuesday night, less than 24 hours after Cuellar was dragged in his pyjamas from his home in Florencia.
Uribe said senior military officials told him that "because security forces were in pursuit, the terrorists, so as to avoid gunfire, proceeded to cut the throat of the governor".
Cuellar was grabbed by eight to 10 men in military uniforms, who killed a police guard and used explosives to blow open the front door to the governor's home at about 10pm on Monday.
Two other police guards suffered shrapnel wounds.
Uribe said the rebels first ditched and set fire to the pick-up truck they had used to carry away the 69-year-old Cuellar.
His body, still clad in pyjamas, was found lying at the top of a steep hill on Florencia's outskirts.
Colombian officials have offered a $500 000 reward for information leading to the capture of Cuellar's killers.
Cuellar had previously been kidnapped four times for ransom since 1987. His wife, Himeldo Galindo, told the AP that he had been held from two to seven months in those abductions.
Caqueta has long been a stronghold of Farc, which finances its insurgency chiefly from the cocaine trade.
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