Colombia Police Chief Slain After Battling Drug Cartel : Had Sent Guards to Aid Judges

The police chief of Colombia’s Antioquia state, who took on the notorious Medellin drug cartel on its home territory, was shot to death today in a hail of machine-gun fire near his home, authorities said.

The shooting came a day after judges shut down Colombia’s courts indefinitely and 50 of Bogota’s 55 appeals court judges resigned to demand more government protection from ruthless drug lords.

The provincial police chief, Col. Waldemar Franklin Quintero, was killed and his driver wounded when gunmen intercepted their car and riddled it with automatic weapons fire, authorities and witnesses said.

The attack came after Franklin Quintero sent his own bodyguards to protect court judges whose lives had been threatened.

Since assuming his post in January, the colonel had led an active campaign against drug traffickers and right-wing death squads.

Local reporters said he coordinated two helicopter-borne police raids aimed at dismantling two big Medellin cocaine cartel complexes, last January and two months ago.

Franklin Quintero had told reporters privately in recent months that he had received a stream of death threats.

Nevertheless, provincial Gov. Helena Herran de Montoya said, he gave up his bodyguard force because he “thought it was more important to use this personnel in protecting judges.”

Authorities blamed the killing on the Medellin cartel, the world’s largest cocaine ring, which is believed responsible for about 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States.

“They fired without mercy for several minutes at the colonel, who was hit more than 100 times,” an unidentified witness told Radio Caracol. “His chauffeur was seriously injured and taken to a hospital.”

The nation’s judges went on strike Thursday to demand increased protection. They struck after gunmen hired by drug dealers killed Magistrate Carlos Valencia Garcia in Bogota on Wednesday night. That killing also prompted the 50 magistrates in Bogota’s appellate court to hand in their resignations.

Valencia Garcia, 43, had rejected court motions to exonerate two leaders of the Medellin cartel who were accused in the 1987 slaying of a journalist.

Asked about the strike and Franklin Quintero’s slaying, Justice Minister Monica de Grieff said: “It’s terrifying what is happening in Colombia.”

“The only way to confront this challenge is by fighting together--the government, judges, the armed forces and the citizenry--to stop the wave of violence,” she said in Bogota.

She appealed to the country’s more than 4,000 judges and magistrates to end their strike so traffickers don’t “achieve their goal of halting the administration of justice.”

Today’s attack was the latest in several drug-related killings in Medellin, Colombia’s second-largest city and its industrial center.

In the last month, two officials investigating the activities of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar Gaviria have been slain. On Thursday night, an armed band intercepted a police van carrying 18 people who had been arrested and set them free. They included several suspected drug traffickers.