Human rights groups say Carmelo Agamez's case is an example of how Colombia's justice system is broken, and how unjustifiable arrests are used to intimidate dissidents.
Reporting from Corozal, Colombia -- Community organizer Carmelo Agamez has spent five months in jail and still has not seen the evidence against him, been told who his accuser is or been notified of a trial date. Welcome to justice, Colombia style.
Facing what he says is a laughable charge of consorting with right-wing paramilitary leaders, the lifelong socialist says he has been thrown arbitrarily into the maw of Colombian justice.
In a jailhouse interview in northern Sucre state, Agamez said the real reason he was arrested was that he was organizing displaced Afro-Colombians in the town of San Onofre. That angered powerful interests trying to assemble abandoned lands for cattle, lumber and oil-drilling projects, he said.
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia-leftist2-2009apr02,0,3559772.story