Brother of Colombia Peace Envoy Kidnapped

In a hail of bullets, heavily armed men snatched the brother of a prominent peace negotiator from his exclusive neighborhood in the city of Medellin on Monday, threatening to further snarl this country’s slow-moving peace process.

The afternoon gunfight and kidnapping came just four days after peace envoy Fabio Valencia Cossio received a threatening letter from the right-wing Self-Defense Forces of Colombia disputing his strategy for negotiating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, this country’s oldest and largest rebel group, known as the FARC.

The letter from the paramilitary group accused him of “not just being excessively generous to the FARC, but also defending the subversives’ interests with a protagonist’s spirit,” local media reported.

That threat created special concern about the kidnapping of his brother, Guillermo Valencia Cossio, who serves on a local government board. Valencia Cossio was abducted from the same neighborhood where gunmen last year grabbed peace advocate Sen. Piedad Cordoba before delivering her to a right-wing paramilitary leader.

Interior Minister Humberto de la Calle warned, “If there are ties between this kidnapping and the fact that Fabio Valencia participates at the negotiating table, this would be very ominous, because it would put at risk the process itself and the safety of the negotiators.”

Still, by late Monday, officials were unable to blame the abduction on any of the various armed groups that terrorize Colombia.

Police said they were questioning a suspect with ties to the Medellin-based La Terraza crime ring, which was implicated in Cordoba’s abduction.

Because an average of eight kidnappings a day occur in this country, authorities appeared reluctant to repeat a mistake they made in May, when they quickly accused the FARC of clasping a necklace bomb on a rancher.

In the outrage after the bomb exploded, decapitating the woman, the government suspended the 17-month-old peace talks. Later, police arrested a neighbor who is now in jail awaiting trial for the killing, which apparently was not connected to the rebels.

On Monday, at least six men grabbed Guillermo Valencia Cossio, a police spokesman said. One of his bodyguards was killed in a gunfight that broke out during the abduction and another was injured, the spokesman said.

Police found one more body at the scene and were trying to determine if it was that of a passerby or one of the kidnappers. The abductors escaped from the scene by switching cars during their getaway, the spokesman said.