More order and less law

THE police could, as Nelson Berrio points out, have visited him during office hours. But instead the 40 or so state-security agents who searched the Bogota offices of the Permanent Assembly for Peace, a coalition of peace groups, last week chose to break through a window at 5am. They forced open filing cabinets and combed computer files, before leaving empty-handed. “We have not received any explanation as to why the search took place,” says Mr Berrio, a director of the assembly, which includes religious and trade-union groups and which receives funding from several European embassies.