ALBERTO VILLAMIZAR, 62 Colombian diplomat
Alberto Villamizar, a Colombian politician and diplomat whose crusade against drug cartel kidnappings was chronicled by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, died Thursday in Bogota of complications from heart surgery.
Mr. Villamizar rose to prominence in the 1980s as an ally of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan. During one of the bloodiest chapters in Colombia's history, the two sought to curb the growing wealth and political power of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.
After Mr. Villamizar narrowly escaped an attempt on his life outside his Bogota home in 1986, he was named Colombia's ambassador to Indonesia and left the country.
After his return, Escobar's henchmen kidnapped his wife, Maruja Pachon, and sister, Beatriz Villamizar de Guerrero. The story of their 1990 abduction, and Mr. Villamizar's lonely five-month negotiation with the cartel to win their release, was detailed in Mr. Garcia Marquez's 1997 nonfiction work News of a Kidnapping.
In 1996, President Ernesto Samper named Mr. Villamizar the country's first anti-kidnapping czar.