Word: lara
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...unconditional declaration of war that Colombian President Belisario Betancur Cuartes issued from the pulpit of the cathedral in Neiva earlier this month. He had walked to the cathedral behind the flag-draped coffin of his slain Justice Minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, 37. "There will be no truce for the narcotics traffickers," Betancur vowed, his voice trembling with emotion. "There will be punishment without mercy." The mourners broke into applause when the President declared, "The international drug criminals will see us standing proudly before a homeland that stands united in repudiation...
...Lara was murdered with a submachine gun on April 30 by two men riding on a motorcycle. One of them was killed when the machine crashed. The survivor confessed that he had been paid $21,000 to carry out the killing. Lara, a vigorous opponent of narcotics traffickers, became the first Cabinet official to die at the hands of the Colombian mafia. Within hours of his death, Colombian police, army and security forces launched the most extensive crackdown on the narcotics trade in the country's history, one that promises to help the U.S. in its uphill struggle...
...being waged not only in the countryside, where marijuana and cocaine are grown and processed, but also inside Colombia's corrupt bureaucracy. After Lara's funeral, Betancur declared a nationwide state of emergency, giving the army a free hand to arrest suspects without a warrant and try them in military courts. Hundreds of people have been detained so far. About 400 judges accused of handling narcotics cases improperly will be removed, as well as 280 members of the national police force who have allegedly accepted bribes from the Colombian mafia...
DIED. Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, 40, Colombia's Minister of Justice; by assassination, when two gunmen on a motorcycle pulled up to his car and shot him eight times with a machine gun; in Bogota. The first Colombian law-enforcement boss to wage a vigorous campaign against his country's powerful drug traffickers, Lara refused to wear a bulletproof jacket despite death threats. One of the two hitmen died immediately when the motorcycle crashed; the other, captured minutes later, claimed that "everything was arranged in Medellin," center of Colombia's $5 billion-a-year drug trade. After...
Jorge Perez de Lara Mexico City...