Colombia ex-official gets 24 years for murder
A former Colombian justice minister and advisor to the late drug lord Pablo Escobar was sentenced Thursday to 24 years in prison for his role in the 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan.
Alberto Santofimio Botero, a former senator, was convicted by a judge in Bogota, Colombia’s capital, of “murder for terrorist purposes.”
Escobar’s ex-girlfriend, model and newscaster Virginia Vallejo, had said she overheard Santofimio talk Escobar into ordering the hit as a way to protect the cocaine kingpin from extradition to the United States.
The charismatic Galan, an anti-corruption crusader who called for the extradition of cocaine traffickers in his fiery speeches, was shot dead during a campaign event in a Bogota suburb.
His campaign manager, Cesar Gaviria, went on to win the election in Galan’s stead and later headed the Organization of American States.
Escobar waged a bombing campaign to pressure the government against extradition and ordered the deaths of hundreds of politicians and rival drug gang members before he was killed by police in a 1993 Medellin shootout.
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