Alberto Villamizar | Colombian diplomat, 62

Alberto Villamizar, 62, 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 after 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.

As head of the New Liberal party in the lower house of Congress, Mr. Villamizar blocked attempts backed by Escobar's Medellin cartel to pass a constitutional amendment forbidding extradition. In retaliation, Escobar placed Mr. Villamizar on a hit list of adversaries.

In 1986, he was named Colombia's ambassador to Indonesia, and left the country. After his return, Escobar's henchmen kidnapped his wife and sister. The story of their 1990 abduction, and Mr. Villamizar's lonely five-month negotiation with the cartel to win their release, was detailed in 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. He also served as Colombia's ambassador to the Netherlands from 1991 to 1994 and to Cuba from 1997 to 1999.