Solving a Journalist's Murder p.

By: Editorial Staff

U.S. Attorney says the $20,000 murder contract came
from the highest levels of the Cali drug cartel
ANNOUNCING ARRESTS THAT they said solved the murder of journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue, federal prosecutors in New York said that Colombian cocaine kingpins, miffed at his reporting, hired assassins to silence the crusading Spanish-language editor and publisher.
Investigators said they devoted the same attention to the journalist's murder that they devote to finding cop killers.
De Dios died on the night of March 11, 1992, after a gunman walked calmly into the Meson Asturias restaurant in a predominantly Hispanic area of Queens, N.Y., and fired two shots from a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol into the journalist's head as he drank a beer at the counter.
Authorities on May 10 announced the indictments in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn of Alejandro Wilson Mej?a V?lez, 18, the alleged triggerman, and John Mena, 24, who allegedly hired him on a contract from cocaine smugglers based in Cali, Colombia.
Acting U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White said V?lez was arrested May 8 outside a rooming house in Miami. Mena has been in jail for nearly a year on charges that he ran a New York cocaine-processing factory, and other suspects are under arrest.
"We now have in custody most of those directly responsible for this murder," White said at a press conference.
"Any murder is obviously a heinous crime. But when the victim is murdered not for revenge or out of a passion, but because he has reported on the truth as he has found it, we all are very much the victims here," she said.
Press reports, quoting unnamed law enforcement sources, said charges have been lodged, but the indictments remain sealed against at least five others, including two who have agreed to plead guilty.
A special homicide unit of New York City Police Department detectives spearheaded the international investigation that led to the arrests.
A cooperative effort by New York journalists to investigate the murder fell apart not long after it started last year.
While news of journalists being assaulted and killed is not uncommon in many nations, de Dios' execution was particularly blatant, coming as it did in what is regarded as the nation's media capital.
Mena was arraigned May 11 and faces a minimum of 20 years and maximum of life in prison if convicted on the murder charge. V?lez was awaiting arraignment in Florida and was expected to be extradited to New York.
White gave few details except to say that the $20,000 murder contract came from "the highest levels" of the Cali drug cartel and very little of it was actually paid.
Cuban-born, de Dios, 48, was a former editor of New York's Spanish language daily El Diario/La Prensa and wrote and published on a shoestring two local crime magazines, Crimen, or Crime, and Cambio XXI, or Change 21, referring to the next century, at the time he was killed.
One issue of Crimen described a 1991 bust of an alleged New York branch of the Cali organization and named Jose Santacruz Londono and Gilberto Rodriguez-Orejuela as leaders of the cartel.
De Dios' companion and mother of his child, Vicky Sanchez, told reporters at a separate news conference that authorities "didn't have the courtesy to tell me" about the arrests, "and it's a shame that they didn't have the courtesy to inform Manuel's family. His friends and family and I have been after them from the beginning to solve this case and not let it die."
She said justice would not be done until the men who ordered the assassination were punished.
Investigators had more than their share of leads, because de Dios had many enemies. He wrote extensively about the police killing of two Puerto Rican independence leaders and had built up large debts locally.
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