INFORMANT PLEADS FOR PROTECTION FROM REPUTED CALI STRONGMAN

NEW YORK (AP) A jailed informant in the execution of a crusading journalist
in Queens has accused the government of failing to protect his family from a
bloody campaign of retaliation in Colombia.

In a series of anguished letters to a Brooklyn judge, John Harold Mena said
five family members, including his 77-year-old father, have been
assassinated since he agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in the
1992 murder of Manuel de Dios Unanue.

Mena's testimony became instrumental in the convictions of Cali drug cartel
operatives in the United States, and the 1999 arrest in Colombia of a
strongman who ordered the de Dios killing, Guillermo Leon Restrepo Gaviria,
authorities said.

Recently released from prison, Restrepo ''has vowed revenge against me and
my family,'' Mena said in one letter. ''He has said he will kill every
member of my family that he can find.''

Mena, 33, who is serving an 18-year sentence for his role in the
journalist's slaying, claimed that the latest attack came on July 9, when
hit men killed his cousin despite promises by U.S. authorities that his
family would be protected.

''I am pleading for you to appoint an attorney to represent me in this
serious matter,'' Mena wrote on July 25 to U.S. District Judge Edward
Korman. ''You are the only one that can help me in this grave manner.''

Korman was expected to schedule a hearing sometime next week. U.S.
authorities who have previously acknowledged Mena's family was under seige
said they were investigating his latest claims.

Prosecutors once hailed Mena as a ''premier cooperating witness'' in the war
against international drug trafficking the result of a plea deal that spared
him a life sentence in the de Dios slaying.

Mena admitted he was one of the Cali cartel members recruited by Restrepo to
kill de Dios after the journalist enraged Colombian drug lords by writing
exposes about the cartel for Spanish-language magazines in New York. De Dios
was a former editor of El Diario-La Prensa, the Spanish-language newspaper
in the city.

De Dios was shot in the head in March 1992 while eating in a Queens
restaurant. Two years later, the triggerman was convicted in federal court
in Brooklyn and sentenced to life in prison; four other defendants pleaded
guilty.

In his testimony, Mena identified Restrepo as the ''right-hand man'' of drug
lord Jose Santacruz Londono. Santacruz, who died in a gunfight with
Colombian authorties in 1996, wanted de Dio dead because ''he was messing
round with people in Cali by publishing a whole lot of things,'' Mena said.

Mena said in his letters to Korman that, in exchange for his testimony,
prosecutors promised the Drug Enforcement Administration ''would bring my
family to this country.'' He claimed he gave the government namnes of family
members who were at risk, but the DEA refused to protect them because agents
''no longer needed my assistance.''

A DEA spokeswoman, Liz Jordan, declined comment.

Prosecutors recently told Korman that the DEA has been ''attempting to
corroborate the information provided by Mena.'' But at Mena's 1996
sentencing, authorities confirmed that his father, uncle and aunt all had
been killed in apparent retaliation for his cooperation.