Nine years ago Orlando Sierra, managing editor of the Manizales newspaper La Patria, was returning from lunch with his daughter when a hitman took his life. 

Investigation into this case, which for a long time went unpunished despite the conviction of the perpetrators, appears at last to be leading to those who ordered the murder of a journalist who had confronted them by writing about political corruption in Caldas province. Last year the Colombia Attorney General’s Office linked four people to the investigation, among them political boss Ferney Tapasco Gonzalez and his son, Dixon Tapasco. 

Last Friday, January 28, 2011, the Bogotá Humans Rights Ninth Division wound up its investigation into the Caldas politician and this week will do so into his son, the former member of Congress Dixon Tapasco. 

For the attack committed on January 30, 2002 and which resulted in Sierra’s death three days later convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison were Francisco Antonio Quintero, known as “Tilin,” and Arley Ortiz Orozco, a.k.a. “Pereque,” as joint perpetrators of the crime. The hitman who shot Sierra, Luis Fernando Soto, who spent six years in prison, died three years ago after being released and clashing with police on the street in Cali as he tried to carry out a hold-up.