Colombian Human Rights Defender Ivan Cepeda Faces Criminal Charges for Speaking Out on Government-Para-military Ties

We end today's show with a story out of Colombia. Twenty-nine members of Congress have written a letter to the attorney general of Colombia asking him to drop criminal charges against one of the country's leading human rights defenders, Ivan Cepeda. Cepeda has been charged with slander and libel for publicly calling for the mayor of San Onofre to resign for alleged ties to paramilitary groups. The Congressional letter said in part: "We are concerned that the charges against Dr. Cepeda are politically motivated and form part of a broader pattern of instigating specious legal proceedings against Colombian human rights defenders in order to discredit them."

Cepeda is the director of the National Movement for Victims of State Crimes, an umbrella organization for more than 200 Colombian human right organizations. In 1996, government forces assassinated his father – Manuel Cepeda, a leading leftist Senator in Colombia. Ever since then Ivan Cepeda has worked to expose death squads in Colombia.

In June Human Rights First honored Cepeda by awarding him the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty. While he was in New York to receive the award, Ivan Cepeda joined us in the Firehouse studio along with Andrew Hudson an attorney at Human Rights First.

• Ivan Cepeda. Director of the National Movement for Victims of State Crimes, an umbrella organization for more than 200 Colombian human right organizations. Human Rights First recently awarded him the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty.

• Andrew Hudson. Attorney at Human Rights First.

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