The news recalled the worst times of Colombia, a country eager to turn the page of violence after decades of combating all kinds of criminal groups. The murder in the city of Cali of Alcibiades Booksellers, by a special prosecutor against organized crime that his colleagues described him as an honest public official with a reputation of incorruptible, has led to the rejection unanimous of the authorities, who have promised quickly to investigate the crime.

“Was characterized as one of the prosecutors who pursued organized crime and drug trafficking, in particular to the groups of gunmen from the district of Aguablanca, one of the popular districts of Cali, a work that earned him the recognition of the municipal authorities, said the office of the Prosecutor General of the Nation this Monday in a press release that highlighted their dedication and commitment. Also had shown compelling results against other organisations in the west of the country, as the Clan of the Herrera and The mountains. “All the operational capability and research of the Office has been arranged on the ground to ensure that those responsible for this murder are brought immediately to justice,” said the agency investigator.

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Booksellers, 58 years old, was shot on Sunday by gunmen who rode on a bike to stop their Citroën grey at a traffic light in a central street of the capital of the department of Valle del Cauca, in the west of the country. According to the authorities, not accompanied by his bodyguards because he was on vacation. “He was a man relentless in the fight against criminal structures” assessed Andrés Villamizar, the secretary of Security and Justice, while expressing his condolences to relatives and colleagues. In the same direction, the mayor-elect, Jorge Iván Ospina, who takes over next Wednesday, the first of January, called “surround the Prosecutor's office of colombia and to the men who have consecrated their life to counteract the actions of the criminal groups".

His death rocked one of the city's colombian hit hardest by the violence. Like Medellín, Cali suffered at the end of the last century the stigma of the drug trade and the ravages of the great posters, as well as the actions of the guerrillas, in particular the mass kidnappings. Close to territories are still in dispute in the departments of Cauca and Nariño, the capital of the Valley is affected by a broad spectrum of criminal groups, from gangs to organized armed groups. The authorities have even warned of the incipient presence of emissaries of the mexican cartels.

With 2.4 million inhabitants, Cali is the great metropolis of the southwest, very close both to the mountain range as the Pacific coast —which functions as a corridor for cocaine smuggling with destination to Central america and the united States— and decades-to face complex phenomena of insecurity. A recent audit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC, for its acronym in English) identifies 182 clusters which are illegal in the city, of which three-fourths are made up of children and adolescents used for criminal activities.

With a robust business fabric, the “capital of salsa” carries so far this century engaged in combat all of those phenomena. With a rate of 46,7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018, nearly double the national average (25), but has achieved a significant reduction from a peak of over 100 by the end of the nineties, thanks to prevention programs and routes of re-socialization in urban areas.

Date Of Update: 30 December 2019, 21:00