Colombian Judge Slain in Drug Traffic Capital

A federal judge was gunned down today as he waited on a Medellin street corner for a ride to work, and an anonymous caller said drug traffickers killed him in retaliation for extraditions to the United States.

Courts were paralyzed in Medellin after the slaying and judges announced a 72-hour strike to press security demands.

Police said Judge Hector Jimenez Rodriguez was shot six times by a passenger on a motorcycle.

The gunman got off the motorcycle, walked up to Jimenez and shot him, the Colombian radio chain Caracol quoted witnesses as saying in Medellin, the base of the country’s most notorious cocaine cartel.

An anonymous caller to Caracol said the judge was slain by “The Extraditables,” a group of suspected drug traffickers being hunted for extradition to the United States.

The government of President Virgilio Barco Vargas has extradited four Colombians to the United States, including three last Saturday, since a crackdown on drug trafficking began Aug. 19.

“The Extraditables” said in a communique soon after the crackdown began that they would kill 10 judges for every Colombian extradited. Jimenez was the first judge killed since the drug sweep started. It was not immediately known if Jimenez had been involved in any recent extradition cases.

Court activity in Medellin came to a standstill as judges met behind closed doors to decide what to do, an executive of the Assn. of Judicial Employees said.

Hours later, the National Judicial Assn. announced a three-day strike beginning Wednesday to protest the government’s “lack of protection granted to judges,” an association spokesman said.

Colombia’s 4,379 judges last month had threatened to go on strike unless they received assurances about concrete measures to protect them.

Supreme Court President Fabio Moron urged the government today to “quickly adopt those measures,” which include armored cars and guards assigned to judges’ homes and offices.

There are varying figures on the number of judges that have been killed in Colombia, but the Justice Ministry says about 50 judges and 170 judicial employees have been killed since 1982.

In another development, a suspected drug trafficker sought for extradition by the United States escaped from a hospital in the Caribbean port city of Barranquilla Monday, apparently with the complicity of an army corporal, police said.

Humberto Gomez Zapata, 36, who had been detained Sept. 21 and was to be transferred to Bogota to await extradition to Florida, vanished without a trace from the city’s main hospital where he was recovering from an appendectomy.

Hospital workers said the corporal gave drugged coffee to 14 people, including nine soldiers, who were guarding Gomez. He apparently left the hospital dressed as a soldier.