FOURTH JOURNALIST IN 2 MONTHS KIDNAPPED, SLAIN IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A Colombian journalist was shot and killed after being
abducted from his home in an area dominated by right-wing paramilitary
gangs, authorities said Friday.

Roberto Julio Torres, 38, was the fourth journalist killed in Colombia in
the last two months and one of more than 120 murdered since 1980, according
to the Bogota-based Committee for the Protection of Colombian Journalists.

His death came shortly after President Andres Pastrana, a former TV
anchorman, vowed to crack down on attacks against journalists at a meeting
Wednesday of the Inter-American Press Association in Houston.

Torres, editor of the Meridiano newspaper in Sincelejo, capital of northwest
Sucre province, was dragged out of his home early Thursday by gunmen who
sped off after bundling him into the back of a car, police said.

They said his bullet-riddled body was found dumped on the outskirts of the
city, long considered a stronghold of Colombia's leading paramilitary group.

Paramilitaries, accused by human rights groups of operating with the open or
tacit support of the army, have killed leftists and suspected rebel
sympathizers in Colombia with impunity for well over a decade.

Colleagues of Torres said he had recently complained of receiving anonymous
death threats.

Colombia's powerful drug mobs, and its protracted guerrilla conflict in
which more than 35,000 people have died in the last decade, make it one of
the most dangerous countries for journalists.