Jose Eduardo Umana Mendoza, Colombia's highly-respected human rights activist and professor of criminal law, was shot dead in his home in Bogota last Saturday. Two men and a woman had gained entry by claiming to be journalists.
A tireless defender of political prisoners, Umana took the cases that no one else would touch, representing guerrillas, union activists, indigenous people and victims of state-sponsored terror.
Umana was Colombia's representative before the World Anti-Torture Organisation, which gathered information on 360 police and army officials accused of direct participation in gross rights abuses. The information led to exclusion orders being issued against Colombia's highest-ranking generals. This was one more nail in Umana's coffin.
The last time I saw Umana alive was in November 1997, in his modest Bogota home. He was in top form despite another assassination attempt the day before.
"It's the least that any human rights activist can expect in this country," he said, shrugging his shoulders. Umana refused state protection. "Why bother, when it's the state who will kill me anyway?"
The jovial former athlete chain-smoked, drank endless tinto (thick black Colombian coffee), slept four hours a day, lived with a phone in one hand and an air ticket in the other, travelling the length and breadth of the country to defend new detainees.
As the country's guerrillas gained ground across the nation, Umana did not hesitate to criticise their shortcomings. "The guerrillas have a powerful military presence but they lack a coherent political project," he said.
The UN Human Rights Commission demanded a "thorough investigation" into Umana's death, which it described as another sign of "the clear will to physically destroy those who promote and protect human rights in this country".
Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas gave Umana the local equivalent of a volley of shots over the coffin, a sad reminder that in Colombia there are no neutrals. State terror and guerrilla violence have sucked up every available space for human rights.
"There is an irreversible slide toward a type of Latin American fascism in Colombia, which rules out all efforts to secure dignity for the poor," Umana had warned.