WORLD BRIEFS: COLOMBIA JOURNALIST SLAIN, THE FOURTH THIS YEAR

BOGOTA - Gunmen claiming allegiance to an anti-Communist death squad in
Colombia have shot dead a journalist and dumped his body on a remote
roadside, authorities said yesterday.

Carlos Jose Restrepo, editor and publisher of two regional publications in
central Tolima province, was the fourth journalist murdered this year in
war-torn Colombia. Police said Restrepo was seized Saturday near the town
of El Cerrito in Tolima, a coffee-growing region, by 20 men who said they
were members of a nationwide paramilitary force known as the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Witnesses told police that the gunmen
accused the journalist of collecting extortion payments on behalf of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's largest Marxist
guerrilla force. (Reuters)