COLOMBIAN JUDGE SEEKS US ASYLUM FROM DEATH THREAT

Bogota Says Danger Is Past, So She Must Return Home

Seven years after the death of the world's most notorious cocaine
trafficker, the name Pablo Escobar can still inspire terror.

The judge who signed his arrest warrant in 1987 has applied for political
asylum in the US, claiming that she is still marked for death.

After she approved the warrant charging Escobar with the murder of a
prominent journalist, Consuelo Sanchez was sent to a diplomatic posting in
the US to protect her from death threats. She has spent 12 years in
America, and has two daughters born there.

Escobar was shot dead by security agents in 1993 and the Colombian
government says that Ms Sanchez is no longer in danger. Last week the
foreign ministry terminated her job as consul in Washington and ordered her
to return.

She says that Escobar's surviving allies will kill her if she goes back.

"The ... order for me to return home to my country is the signature on the
death warrant prepared for me by the Colombian drug cartel in 1988 and
remaining in force today," she wrote in her asylum application.

"I'm not just trying to keep my job. The only thing I have asked the
president and the courts is for them to protect my life, which is a
fundamental right. This is a question of human rights," she said in a
telephone interview.

Ms Sanchez was the youngest judge in Colombia when she started
investigating the death of Guillermo Cano, a newspaper director shot in 1986.

She was immediately threatened by Escobar and other drugs barons who feared
extradition to the US.

In one message "the Extraditables" warned her that if she charged Escobar
"[You would] commit an error that would stain your life and would plague
you until your dying day. You are perfectly aware that we are capable of
executing you anywhere on the planet".

Escobar's appetite for violence as an instrument of intimidation and
revenge was demonstrated in a national terror campaign in the late 1980s as
part of the drug barons' fight against extradition. Scores of Colombians,
including ministers, presidential candidates and judges, were shot or
bombed. Mafia gunmen tracked down and shot a former justice minister who
had been posted to Hungary for his protection.

Four days after signing Escobar's warrant, Ms Sanchez resigned from the
judiciary and was sent to the US. Two other judges and a lawyer who worked
on the case were murdered by Escobar's men.

The Medellin cartel collapsed after Escobar's death in December 1993, but
only one major drug trafficker has been successfully extradited for trial
in the US.

Last November 6 people were killed and 40 injured by a car bomb which
exploded in Bogota days after 40 suspected drug traffickers were arrested
pending extradition.

Meanwhile judges, reporters and human rights researchers are still
regularly attacked by the mafia, leftwing rebels and paramilitaries, Jose
Miguel Vivanco of the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said.

"Many officials investigating narcotics, human rights abuses or corruption
are subject to threats, persecution and harassment. Sometimes the only
solution is for them to leave the country," he said.