Catholic World News News Feature

German-born Bishop Banned From Colombia For Negotiating Ransoms June 04, 1999

BOGOTA (CWNews.com) - Colombia's government has announced that a German-born bishop serving in Ecuador is no longer welcome in the country because he allegedly negotiated ransoms for kidnap victims held by rebels.

Col. German Gustavo Jaramillio, chief of Colombia's state security police, said Archbishop Emilio Stehle of Santo Domingo de los Colorados, Ecuador, will no longer be allowed to enter Colombia. Archbishop Stehle was nominated in 1994 for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to mediate peace in El Salvador and sought to play a similar role in Colombia between the government and the Marxist National Liberation Army (ELN).

Jaramillo said that Archbishop Stehle had allegedly broken the law on several occasion since 1996. "He was coming here to negotiate kidnappings," Jaramillo said, calling the archbishop "a national security threat" because of his contacts with rebels. A rarely enforced Colombian law prohibits payments of ransoms to kidnappers.

On Tuesday, President Andres Pastrana accused "foreign members of the Catholic Church" of working with ELN rebels to negotiate kidnapping ransoms. "They're being used as collectors of the money paid by Colombian families to pay for the release of kidnap victims," said Pastrana, who filed a formal complaint with the Vatican. On Sunday, ELN rebels abducted more than 140 people from a Catholic church in Cali and still hold more than 80 from that and an earlier abduction.

Meanwhile, soldiers and police continued their massive air and land search for the rebels and their hostages, despite a rebel call for a halt in military operations to facilitate the handover of at least 34 hostages.