By Karl Penhaul

BOGOTA, Aug 11 (Reuter) The missing publisher of a Colombian newspaper is
believed to have been kidnapped in retaliation for his hardhitting columns,
police said on Monday.

Ulido Acevedo Silva, 38, editor and founder of the Hoy Diario del Magdalena
newspaper, disappeared from his office in the Caribbean port city of Santa
Marta on Friday afternoon. His secretary later received an anonymous phone
call saying he had been abducted but no ransom demand was made, police said.

The journalist had been granted police protection two months ago after
receiving anonymous death threats but he later left the city and the
protection was suspended.

``The trail has gone quite cold. We don't know what group was responsible,''
regional police chief Col. Octavio Grajales said in a telephone interview.

Drug trafficking and smuggling is rife in Santa Marta, one of the main ports
on Colombia's Caribbean coast, and leftwing guerrillas are active in the
surrounding countryside.

Acevedo's daily opinion columns covered a wide variety of subjects, including
drug smuggling and political violence, said Ives Ramirez, the newspaper's
administrator.

``We have no idea who is behind Ulido's disappearance,'' Ramirez told
Reuters. ``His columns were always impartial.''

Acevedo, who is married with four children, founded the newspaper three years
ago after working as regional news director in Santa Marta for the Caracol
radio network.

His disappearance is the latest in a series of attacks against journalists in
Colombia.

In March this year, Gerardo Bedoya, editorialist for the respected El Pais
newspaper in the southwest city of Cali, was murdered by a driveby assassin
after a series of outspoken attacks on drugrelated corruption.

His death coincided with the killing of photographer Freddy Elles, who worked
for the El Espectador and Heraldo de Barranquilla newspapers, who was found
handcuffed and stabbed in the Caribbean resort of Cartagena.

In the late 1980s, the Medellin cocaine cartel kidnapped a number of
prominent journalists as part of a violent campaign to force the government
to ban extradition.

Since 1975, more than 100 journalists have been killed in Colombia, according
to the Interamerican Press Association. REUTER

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