The Palace of Justice siege

Was a 1985 attack against the Supreme Court of Colombia, in which members of
the M-19 guerrilla group took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, Colombia, and
held the Supreme Court hostage, intending to hold a trial against President
Belisario Betancur. Hours later, after a military raid, the incident left almost half of
the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead.

Palace of Justice siege

Part of Colombian armed conflict

Date 6 November 1985

Location Bogotá, Colombia
Result creation of the AFEUR unit
35 M19 members dead
11 Supreme Court Justices
dead
48 Colombian Soldiers dead
Destruction of the Palace of
Justice Building

Belligerents

Army of Colombia 19th of April Movement(M19)

Casualties and losses

48 Colombian 35 M19 members dead

Soldiers dead

The siege
Day one: 6 November
On 6 November 1985, at 11:35 a.m., three vehicles holding 35 guerrillas (25 men
and 10 women) stormed the Colombian Palace of Justice, entering through the
basement. Meanwhile, another group of guerrillas disguised as civilians took over
the first floor and the main entrance. The rebels killed security guards Eulogio
Blanco and Gerardo Díaz Arbeláez as well as building manager Jorge Tadeo Mayo
Castro.
Jorge Medina -a witness located in the basement at the start of the siege- said that
"suddenly, the guerrillas entered the basement in a truck. They opened fire with
their machine guns against everyone who was there". The official report judged
that the guerrilla planned the takeover operation to be a 'bloody takeover'.
According to these official sources the guerrilla "set out to shoot indiscriminately
and detonate building-shaking bombs while chanting M19-praising battle cries."
The M-19 lost one guerrilla and a nurse during the initial raid to the building After
the guerrillas took care of the security personnel guarding the building, they went
on to install armed posts at strategic places, such as the stairs and the fourth floor.
A group of guerrillas, led by Commander Luis Otero got to the 4th floor and
kidnapped the President of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Alfonso Reyes
Echandía.
In the meantime many hostages took refuge in empty offices on the first floor,
where they hid until around 2 pm.
The assailants took 300 people hostage, including the 24 justices and 20 other
judges. Once in the building the first hostage the Guerrilla group was asking for
was Supreme Court Justice and President of the Constitutional Court then called
Sala Constitucional, Manuel Gaona Cruz, who was in charge of delivering the
opinion of the Court in regard to the constitutionality of the Extradition Treaty
between Colombia and the United States.
About three hours after the initial seizure, army troops rescued about 200 hostages
from the lower three floors of the courthouse; the surviving gunmen and remaining
hostages occupied the upper two floors.
A recording was delivered to a radio station soon after the seizure, saying that the
M-19 group had taken over the building "in the name of peace and social
justice".From the Supreme Court, the M-19 members demanded via telephone that
President Belisario Betancur come to the Palace of Justice in order to stand trial
and negotiate. The president refused and ordered an emergency cabinet session.
Day two: 7 November
The M-19 rebels freed State Councillor Reynaldo Arciniegas at 8:30am, with a
message for the government to allow the entry of the Red Cross and initiate
dialogue. However, the assault on the Palace of Justice commenced later that
morning.
The assault
The operation to retake the building was led by General Jesús Armando Arias
Cabrales, commander of the Thirteenth Army Brigade in Bogotá; he appointed
Colonel Alfonso Plazas, commander of an armored cavalry battalion, to personally
oversee the operation. The retaking of the building began that day and ended on 7
November, when Army troops stormed the Palace of Justice, after having occupied
some of the lower floors during the first day of the siege. After surrounding the
building with EE-9 Cascavel armored cars and soldiers with automatic weapons,
they stormed the building sometime after 2 pm. The EE-9s knocked down the
building's massive doorway, and even made some direct hits against the
structure's external walls.
The official version of the attack holds that, in an effort to complete one of the 2
objectives they had assaulted the palace for, the M-19 guerrillas burnt different
criminal records containing proof and warrants against many members of the
group. It is also believed, but argued whether they also burnt records against Pablo
Escobar, one of the nation's biggest drug traffickers at the time. However, "no one
knows with absolutely certainty what happened. The results of the tests carried out
later by ballistics experts and investigators demonstrated the most likely cause to
have been the recoil effect of the army's rockets. Tests proved that if fired by a
soldier standing within twenty feet of wood-lined walls of the library that housed
Colombian legal archives, the intense heat generated by the rocket's rear blast
could have ignited the wooden paneling. In any event, in a shelved area stacked
high with old papers, files, books, and newspapers, the quantity of explosives used
by the military virtually guaranteed a conflagration." In total, over 6000 different
documents were burned. The fire lasted about 2 days, even with efforts from
firemen to try to smother the flames. An investigated theory to the "disappearance"
of the missing entities in the siege is that they were charred in the fire, and were
not able to be identified in any way, and without having been found, these entities
are regarded as missing in action. This theory is still being studied in the different
trials of the case.
More than 100 people died during the final assault on the Palace. Those killed
consisted of hostages, soldiers, and guerrillas, including their leader, Andrés
Almarales, and four other senior commanders of M-19. After the raid, another
Supreme Court justice died in a hospital after suffering a heart attack.
Aftermath
The siege of the Palace of Justice and the subsequent raid was one of the
deadliest attacks in Colombia in its war with leftist rebels. The M-19 group was still
a potent force after the raid, but was severely hampered by the deaths of five of its
leaders. In March 1990, it signed a peace treaty with the government.
After the siege, firemen rushed to the site of the assault and smothered the few
flames left in the palace. Other rescue groups assisted with removing debris and
rubble left after the siege.
President Betancur went on national TV on the night of the 7th, saying he took full
responsibility for the "terrible nightmare." He offered condolences to the families of
those who died — civilians and rebels alike — and said he would continue to look
for a peaceful solution with the rebels. Exactly a week later, on 14 November, he
would offer condolences for another tragedy: the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz
volcano, which killed 25,000 people in the Armero tragedy. "We have had one
national tragedy after another", he said.
This siege led to the creation of the AFEUR unit within the Colombian Army to
manage this kind of situation. Colombia's Armed Forces did not have antiterrorist
units specifically trained for urban operations before the siege, and some partially
blamed the final outcome on the relative inexperience of the personnel assigned to
the task.
Dead magistrates
The twelve magistrates killed were:
Manuel Gaona Cruz, Alfonso Reyes Echandía, Fabio Calderón Botero, Dario
Velásquez Gaviria, Eduardo Gnecco Correa, Carlos Medellín Forero, Ricardo
Medina Moyano, Alfonso Patiño Rosselli, Horacio Montoya Gil, Pedro Elías
Serrano Abadía, Fanny González Franco, Dante Luis Fiorillo Porras.
Alleged drug cartel links
The neutrality of this section is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the
talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (March
2013)
Shortly after the siege, the U.S. and Colombian Justice Minister Enrique Parejo
asserted that drug traffickers financed the operation in order to get rid of various
criminal files that were lost during the event, hoping to avoid extradition. The
Special Commission of Inquiry, established by the Betancur government after
intense public pressure, released a June 1986 report which concluded that this
was not the case.
Author Ana Carrigan, who quoted the June 1986 report in her book on the siege
and originally dismissed any such links between the M-19 and the drug mafia, told
Cromos magazine in late 2005 that she now believes that the mafia may have
financially supported the M-19.
Pablo Escobar's son confessed that his father did pay M-19 a million dollars to take
over the Palace of Justice.
On the same day of the siege, the Supreme Court's docket apparently called for
the beginning of pending deliberations on the constitutionality of the Colombia-
United States extradition treaty. The M-19 was publicly opposed to extradition on
nationalist grounds. Several of the magistrates had been previously threatened by
drug lords in order to prevent any possibility of a positive decision on the treaty.
One year after the siege, the treaty was declared unconstitutional.
Former Assistant to the Colombian Attorney General, National Deputy Comptroller,
author and renowned Professor Jose Mauricio Gaona (son of murdered Supreme
Court magistrate Manuel Gaona Cruz[es]) along with the former Minister of Justice
and Ambassador of Colombia to the United Kingdom, Carlos Medellín Becerra
(son of magistrate Carlos Medellín Forero[es]), have consistently pushed for further
and broader lines of investigations related not only to the presumed links between
the M-19 and the Medellín Cartel drug lords, but also to any other possible links to
the investigations performed by the Justices of members of the Armed Forces.
Congressman Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, has denied these
accusations and dismissed them as based upon the inconsistent testimonies of
drug lords. Petro says that the surviving members of the M-19 do admit to their
share of responsibility for the tragic events of the siege, on behalf of the entire
organization, but deny any links to the drug trade.
Impunity
Later investigations and commentators have considered both the M-19 and the
military as responsible for the deaths of the justices and civilians inside the
building. Some have blamed President Belisario Betancur for not taking the
necessary actions or for failing to negotiate, and others have commented on the
possibility of a sort of de facto "24-hour coup", during which the military was in
control of the situation.
According to Ana Carrigan's 1993 book The Palace of Justice: A Colombian
Tragedy, Supreme Court Chief Justice Alfonso Reyes was apparently burned alive
during the assault, as someone incinerated his body after pouring gasoline over it.
The book also asserts that, after the siege was over, some twenty-eight bodies
were dumped into a mass grave and apparently soaked with acid, in order to make
identification difficult. Carrigan argued that the bodies of the victims of the Nevado
del Ruiz volcano eruption, which buried the city of Armero and killed more than
20,000 people, were dumped into the same mass grave, making any further
forensic investigations impractical.
Despite numerous investigations and lawsuits to date, impunity prevailed for most
of the subsequent decades. Ana Carrigan asserted in her 1993 book that
"Colombia has moved on... Colombia has forgotten the Palace of Justice siege", in
much the same way that, in her opinion, Colombians have also forgotten or
adopted a position of denial towards other tragic events, such as the 1928 Santa
Marta Massacre. No definite responsibility has been fixed on the government or on
the surviving members of the M-19 movement who were pardoned after they
demobilized.
Eduardo Umaña, the first attorney representing some of the families of the people
killed during the siege, was assassinated in 1998, and several members of those
families had to flee to Europe because of death threats against them.
The missing
The eleven missing

The eleven missing

Name Occupation

Bernardo Beltrán Fernández Cafeteria waiter

Héctor Jaime Beltrán Fuentes Cafeteria waiter

Ana Rosa Castilblanco* Assistant chef

David Celis Cafeteria Chef

Sold homemade
Norma Constanza Esguerra pastries
in cafeteria
 Cristina Guarín Cortés Teller in cafeteria

Gloria Stella
Cafeteria employee
Lizarazo Figueroa

Luz Mary Portela León Cafeteria dishwasher

Carlos Augusto Vera Rodríguez Cafeteria manager

Niece of
Gloria Anzola de Lanao Aydee Anzola,
state official

Law student,
Irma Franco Pineda
M-19 member

It is suspected that at least 11 people disappeared during the events of the siege,
most of them cafeteria workers, and their fate is unknown. It has been speculated
that their remains may be among a number of unidentified and charred bodies, one
of which was identified through DNA testing done by the National University of
Colombia, leaving the fates of the other 10 still in question.
According to Ana Carrigan, one of the disappeared was a law student and M-19
guerrilla, Irma Franco. Carrigan says Franco was seen by several hostages. She
also states that the guerrilla left with several hostages and was never seen again.
The Special Commission of Inquiry confirmed Franco's disappearance, and the
judges requested that the investigation of her case be thoroughly pursued.
One week after the siege, M-19 released a communique to the press claiming that
six leaders, including Franco, and "seven other fighters" had all been "disappeared
and murdered" by the army. From the tapes of the military and police inter-
communications it is known that army intelligence arrested at least seventeen
people in the course of the two-day siege. None of the M-19 leaders, with the
exception of Andrés Almarales, were ever identified in the city morgue.
Some of their relatives and some human rights organizations have claimed that
they could have been taken alive by the military and then killed outside or inside
the building, possibly after being interrogated and tortured.
Later developments
The new Palace of Justice building.
The events surrounding the Palace of Justice siege received renewed media
coverage in Colombia during the 20th anniversary of the tragedy. Among other
outlets, the country's main daily El Tiempo, the weekly El Espectador, and the
Cromos magazine published several articles, interviews and opinion pieces on the
matter, including stories about the survivors, as well as the plight of the victims'
relatives and those of the missing.
2005–2006 Truth Commission
This article is outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly
available information. (September 2009)
The Supreme Court created a Truth Commission in order to investigate the siege.
The Commission officially began its work on November 3, 2005 and according to
one of its members, Judge Jorge Aníbal Gómez.
2006–2007 Judicial processes
On 22 August 2006, Attorney General Mario Iguarán announced that former
Colonel Edilberto Sánchez, former B-2 intelligence chief of the Army's Thirteenth
Brigade, would be summoned for questioning and investigated for the crimes of
kidnapping and forced disappearance. Public prosecutors are to reopen the case
after examining video tape recordings and identifying cafeteria manager Carlos
Augusto Rodríguez being taken outside of the Palace of Justice alive by a soldier,
together with other former M-19 hostages.
Former Col. Sánchez was then detained. In May 2007, former Col. Sánchez has
been questioned by prosecutors about his possible role in the disappearance of
Irma Franco and at least two cafeteria workers, who would have left the Palace
alive. Sánchez rejected the charges and proclaimed his innocence. He accepted
that he could have received the order to cover the exit of some hostages from the
Palace of Justice.
2008 Virginia Vallejo's testimony
On 11 July 2008, Virginia Vallejo, the television anchorwoman who was
romantically involved with Pablo Escobar from 1983 to 1987 and the author of
"Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar" (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), was asked
to testify in the reopened case of the Palace of Justice siege, in order to confirm
the events described in "That Palace in Flames" and pages 230 to 266 of her
memoir. In the Colombian Consulate in Miami, where she was granted political
asylum on June 3, 2010, she described the drug lord's relationship with the
Sandinista Junta and the M-19 and a meeting of Escobar and the rebel group
commander, Ivan Marino Ospina in which she had been present, two weeks before
the latter was killed by the Army on 29 August 1985. She said that, in mid-1986,
Escobar had told her that he had paid the rebels one million dollars in cash and
another in arms and explosives to steal his files from the Palace of Justice before
the Supreme Court could begin their study to decide on the extradition of the
leading members of the cocaine cartels to the United States of America. During the
testimonial, that lasted five hours, Vallejo also described sixteen photographs of
bodies that had been anonymously sent to her in 1986. According to her, Escobar
identified them as the employees of the Palace cafeteria and two rebel women who
had been detained by the Army after the siege, tortured and disappeared, on
orders of Colonel Edilberto Sánchez, the director of B-2, Military Intelligence. In
October 2008, excerpts of Virginia Vallejo's testimonial, given under gag order,
appeared in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. On radio stations, Vallejo
accused the Colombian General's Attorney's Office of filtering it to the media and of
adulterating the contents to favor the military and former presidential candidate
Alberto Santofimio.
2010 Sentence against Colonel Plazas
In 2010, retired Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega was punished with 30 years of jail
time for his role in forced disappearances after the siege.
The President of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, reacted by declaring that he was "sad
and hurt" by the decision. He announced his intention of seeking changes to the
way military are judged in Colombia and asked for jail time for those he called the
"instigators" of the massacre. Uribe also had a meeting with the military command
to find ways to protect them from "judiciary decisions that interfere with their work".
Nevertheless, Colombia's General Attorney has declared that crimes against
humanity took place during the siege, which has allowed for the continued
processing of another colonel and one general involved in the incident. María
Stella Jara, the judge that handed the sentence to Colonel Plazas left the country
after receiving multiple death threats to her and her son. She and her family had to
live under heavy surveillance for the duration of the trial.

1985 PALACE OF JUSTICE SIEGE

Posted by Joel Gillin on Dec 15, 2014
The Palace of Justice siege refers to the 1985 occupation of Colombia’s Supreme
Court building by M-19 guerrillas, and the subsequent violent military retake that
cost the lives of at least a 100 people, including half the court.
On November 6, 1985, at least 30 guerrillas from the rebel group Movement M-19
stormed the Palace of justice and took 300 hostages with the attention putting
then-President Belasario Betancur and his Defense Minister on trial for violating a
peace agreement.
The government responded with a heavy assault on the palace which left at least
100 people dead, 11 of whom were Supreme Court magistrates.
According to Irish-Colombian journalist Ana Carrigan, Chief Justice Alfonso Reyes
tried to contact President Betancur to arrange for ceasefire and negotiations.
Betancur, however, refused to take phone calls from the magistrate and handed
over the affair to the military. Reyes was among those killed in the siege.
In addition to the known fatalities, there are at least 11 people who disappeared
after the siege, mostly cafeteria workers. One was subsequently found in a mass
grave.
It is widely believed that several people suspected of ties to Movement M-19 were
taken alive from the palace, tortured, and killed by the military. In 2010, an army
colonel was convicted of having participated in these disappearances and given 30
years in prison. Three other army officers face similar charges.
A 1999 US embassy cable claimed that “soldiers killed a number of M-19 members
and suspected members hors de combat, including the palace’s cafeteria staff.”
There have been accusations that the M-19 assault was done with the support of
Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. According to his former hitman, Escobar
provided $2 million to the group to aid the operation. Other Colombian officials also
accused M-19 of these ties, though the 1986 Special Commission of Inquiry
established by President Betancur was unable to substantiate the claims.
The supposed reason for the connection was the confluence of interest between
M-19 and the drug lords against an extradition treaty with the United States, which
the guerrilla group opposed on nationalist grounds. The court was reportedly
scheduled to deliberate on the constitutionality of the law the day the palace was
taken over.
There were also accusations that the M-19 was attempting to destroy criminal
records against group members and Escobar, though many also believe those
were simply destroyed in the barrage of rockets.

Palace of Justice siege: 24 years of injustice

Posted by Juan Francisco Lanao Anzola on Nov 5, 2009
Colombia these days commemorates the Palace of Justice Siege, a tragic event
that occurred over November 6 and 7 1985 in Bogota. A defining event in the
history of the country and for which after so many years, there remain no culprits.
The siege demonstrates a sorrowful reality and proves that the respect of Human
Rights in Colombia remains in its infancy.
I evoke this column in memory of my mother as well as to promote the right to truth
regarding one of the innumerable violent examples that prevail in Colombian
recollection. I wish to emphasize that I have been waiting 24 years for clarity and
justice on behalf of the State.
I express my gratitude for the attention of those interested in my testimony in
relation to the innocent victims of violence – the Missing Persons of the Palace of
Justice – and I hope that with this, I can at least enlighten you.
In 1985, the former guerrilla faction (M-19) took the Palace of Justice with the
intention of carrying out a political trial against the then President of the Republic,
Belisario Betancourt. This guerrilla operation was supported by the Drug
Traffickers of the 80s (Pablo Escobar and the Drug Cartels) who wanted to prevent
the institutionalization of extradition laws. They endorsed the Siege in order to
destroy files relating to the extradition processes that were kept inside the Palace.
This horrific and painful episode lasted some 27 hours, in which innocent people
were killed, among them magistrates, judicial branch workers and visitors
(culminating in more than 100 dead and several reported missing). The
commemoration was acknowledged by the mass media in the form of a request by
the President of the Supreme Court of Justice, Alfonso Reyes Echandía asking
former President Betancourt to not abandon the relatives of victims in their
unfavourable luck and to appeal for a ceasefire as well as advance peace talks.
For 27 hours, 300 hostages were held in the Palace while waiting for an answer
from the President, but the order never arrived and instead, on the second day, the
Palace was stormed by the Army amid various dubious irregularities. For instance,
there is videos evidence that visually proved Army personnel accompanying some
hostages safely from the Palace to the “Casa del Florero”, a museum located
nearby. Yet subsequently, in the hands of the Army, some of the hostages were
‘disappeared’.
Here is where this history became personal, for one of the disappeared persons
was Gloria Anzola de Lanao, my Mother. Though when the event occurred I barely
knew her for I was scarcely eight months old, my grief is profound. And although
today I still do not know her whereabouts, the feeling inside me that one has for the
person who brought you into the world and is your cause, provenience and life
remains unalterable.
My mother was an advocate and a Professor of Law. A kind, sweet, intelligent
person and a mother filled with the love and happiness of the birth of her first son
and unfortunately life’s path took her to the wrong place at the wrong time. My
mother entered the Palace as she always used to, in order to park her car, almost
at the exact time the Siege. After this tragedy, her car remained there but nothing
more was ever known about her.
Currently, the culprits have not been penalized, they walk free with their filthy
conscience of the past, with the lack of presence and the apathy of the State to
solve the case. Threats have been made against witnesses who affirm that many
of the missing people exited the palace alive and that by the power of the Army,
they may have been brutally tortured and murdered. This demonstrates that there
has been a gross manipulation of information and what is most tragic is that the
grief of the holocaust has been ignored.
Hereby, I call on the State, evoking the Right and respect to Human Life, to
demand Justice for all of the events which occurred in the Palace of Justice Siege.
My mother, through her profession as an advocate sought Justice, and she gave
justice professionally, the same Justice that for her case has been absent for more
than two decades.
My mother believed in Colombia, as an advocate she practiced law ensuring the
respect for Fundamental Rights and the Constitution to enrich coexistence.
As a professor she trained and nurtured competent professional students who
have gone on to act in instituting Rights and Justice. She believed in the laws of
Colombia, relied on the institutions – which are the same ones to which I am
imploring the Truth today. She believed in the Justice of the State, and I as her
son, after another whole year without truth demand for it. I expect the State to take
action to consolidate the peace of it’s own citizens. I request that those responsible
directly and indirectly will be punished, with the execution of Justice so that
impunity does not prevail.
I call for the State to make itself worthy of respect, by casting the sword of Justice,
impartial and even as the balance symbolizes. I implore Justice for Colombian
society and for us as members of that society. I implore that the State commit to
Justice as a developing country and I request the commitment of developed
countries and the international organizations that work for the progress of the
developing ones. Finally I request the universalizing of a better quality of life for all
human beings.
I cannot be patriotic in the absence of truth. I want to believe in Colombia and in its
Institutions and feel myself strong enough to uphold our international image. I wish
that each time I sing the Anthem of Colombia, the “Gloria Inmarcesible”(Unfading
Glory), I am sure that my mother Gloria Isabel Anzola de Lanao, did not fade
because the State did not let that happen, that they are stepping forwards on
reliance and institutionalization.
Mother, I cannot tell you this face to face, but you do not know how much I miss
and love you and I wish to demonstrate that your life and your inspirations were not
in vain, that your intentions will prosper with Justice. I prefer to believe that this was
a sacrifice for Colombia, our people and for me.
I want Colombia to let me bury my mother, give her the last sacrament and to allow
me a place where I can pray and entrust her and at the very least let me have
somewhere to leave her a flower.
Thank you for your understanding and for commemorating with me, this important
date for Colombia.

Palace of Justice siege: Colombia can’t be built without justice

Posted by Juan Francisco Lanao Anzola on Apr 21, 2010
Nearly a quarter of a century after the Palace of Justice siege, there are still no
answers on what became of the eleven people who went missing during the attack.
A verdict was supposed to be given on April 15 in the case against Colombian
former army Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega, for his role in the disappearances in the
attack of November 7, 1985, but it was postponed by the judge.
This is a case where information is manipulated and justice is ever-deferred. I lost
my mother in the siege when I was one year old, and her fate remains unknown.
Over the next 25 years I have come to see that Colombia’s judicial institutions are
incapable of executing justice. There are many vested interests meddling in this
case, and when you follow the legal proceedings with that knowledge, the hope of
finding your mother, and maybe someday giving her the last sacrament that she
deserves, seems very far away.
For those who weren’t directly affected by this event, the facts you know about it
are probably the following:
The Palace of Justice siege took place in Bogota in 1985. Forty members of the M-
19 guerrilla group stormed the Palace of Justice, funded with $2 million by powerful
narco-traffickers who sought to prevent the approval of an extradition deal with the
U.S. The M-19 demanded a public trial of the then-president of Colombia, Belisario
Betancur. The authorities responded with violence, without even an attempt at
dialogue, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people, including the Supreme
Court’s president, in 28 hours of warfare. The Palace of Justice was destroyed by
fire and tank artillery. On the second day of the siege the army recaptured the
palace, and even saved some of the people inside, but the whereabouts of many of
those who were seen coming out alive after the event remain unknown. Among the
eleven people who disappeared, three were visitors and eight were cafeteria
employees. They were young people, with families, children, mothers, and siblings.
The Colombian army stands accused of the forced disappearance of these people.
The evidence indicates that the missing persons were victims of false
imprisonment; interrogated, tortured, and murdered by the army. The media,
various interested parties, and the army justify themselves by saying that these
people were guerrillas. They are trying to hide the truth, because the government
must show its institutions to be effective, must show results that make people think
the state is winning the war against the rebels, and that the army is protector not a
victimizer. Their function is to ensure democracy, our security and to protect our
homeland. Yes, they took the palace back, but what about the abuse of power and
the indiscriminate over-use of their strength?
When your mother is among the disappeared, the weight of what happened, the
impunity of those responsible, seems to grow each year along with your age. You
have ups and downs. You see the progress as much as the procrastination. You
don’t know what to believe, but you are constantly following the case. You are
always up to date with deadlines, evidence, and testimonies that the rest of the
country ignores. Over the last 25 years I’ve tried to imagine that moment when my
mother didn’t pick me up from nursery school. I must have cried for her, but I could
never have known she would be gone for so long. I can’t tell the difference
between memories and what I imagine about her. I have photographs, but all the
time that we could have lived together, and all that she could have taught me was
lost forever on that day. And not even the truth about what happened to her has
been left to me. We know that the M-19 guerrillas are guilty of taking over the
palace, and that it was an attack funded and backed by the powerful Colombian
narco-traffickers. The president wanted to show the strength of his government by
refusing to hold a dialogue with the M-19. The army imposed their strength and
recovered the palace. They brought some people out alive, guerrilla members,
magistrates, and innocent people who were then tortured and “disappeared,”
leaving clear evidence of their crime. The army would eventually distort the official
version by claiming that all the people who left the palace were guerrillas,
contradicting themselves by saying that the disappeared people didn’t even exist,
or with nonsense about their whereabouts. These lies clash with the following
evidence:
The siege took place on a day where the palace was left unprotected by the
authorities, since the plan to attack the Palace of Justice was known some
time in advance by the authorities. Recent reports by the Supreme Court’s
Truth Commission, set up to investigate the case, concluded in December
that this lack of protection was a trap (The “Teoria De La Ratonera,” Or
“Mousetrap Theory”), that the army set to avenge the M-19’s theft of
weapons from a military storage facility in Canton Norte de Bogota.
Let’s consider that the Palace of Justice and the legal files were destroyed by the
fire caused by the tank artillery.
There is evidence of the crimes committed on that day, from the hearings of the
military commandos that are being investigated. For me, one of the most
outlandish pieces of evidence is the record of a blind radio ham that registered
several hours of military commands given during the recovery of the palace
(According To The Testimony Of Mario Quintana). It can be confirmed that during
the conversations of the military there are some commands to soldiers to use their
power without discretion, and also commands as inhuman as the one that says
they should delay the Red Cross aid while the palace is being recovered. There
are recordings of the soldiers saying that the guerrillas in the building are stealing
and putting on civilians’ clothes to try to escape. One says that they have someone
who says she is a lawyer (my mother), and is told “if the sleeve appears, the vest
shouldn’t” – a Colombian saying which means that no evidence at all should be
left.
The well-known videos of the event that were shown in the international media,
and which in this country were censored by those who control the media, in a
strange pact of silence, show the exit from the palace of some of the eleven
persons who then disappeared, guerrilla members, innocent people and also some
magistrates. Some of the people seen in these videos were later found dead, but in
unexplained ways, like being shot at point-blank range, and with cleaned corpses,
which do not match the stories told about their deaths. Some were found in the
palace, the morgue, and the Medicina Legal (government forensic agency), leaving
questions about who killed them and how.
Last week’s testimonies in the hearings mentioned threats made against the
members of the delegate prosecutor, part of the Prosecutor General’s Office, and
also against the judge and some victims’ relatives, to try to stop the case
proceeding. In these testimonies are mentioned some strategic plans to affect
politically the election of a new prosecutor general, which the country currently
lacks, and to remove the delegate prosecutor (Angela Buitriago).
At least one accused party in this case has used his influence to defy court rulings
on his imprisonment. Colonel Plazas Vega was ordered by a judge to be jailed in
Bogota’s maximum-security Picota prison, but a military tribunal intervened on his
behalf, saying that the order was not valid, as he should be tried under military law.
The inspector general overruled this point, but Plazas Vega’s legal team then
claimed that his health was too poor to go to Picota. This protest was in turn shown
to be incorrect, but the former colonel remains in a military hospital rather than in
prison.
There are rumors and lies about delicate subjects, such as the location of the
missing people’s corpses, which give rise to false hope, and show the intention of
some to interfere with the legal process. They are toying not only with the feelings
of the victims’ relatives, but with Colombian justice.
The presidential elections are looming closer, but in the debates the information
given above isn’t even considered, creating even more silence and impunity. All
this points to a future for Colombia where “democratic security” is constantly
mentioned, but is very far from being achieved. Several presidential candidates
have direct links to this case, such as Gustavo Petro, who is a pardoned M19
guerrilla, guilty of the Palace of Justice siege. Noemi Sanin is the former
communication minister who censored the transmission of the events of the siege,
leaving a hole in Colombian history. She took part in creating this uncertainty for
us, this blank in the story of my mother and of my country. Other candidates are
linked to political groups or presidents that have ruled without justice and that have
collaborated in keeping the truth silent, obstructing trials and hearings, and letting
guilty people go free because of the expiration of the legal time-limits. Almost all of
them have been accused by international organisations of abusing their power.
Which of them will bring us justice?
In the old Palace of Justice building, there was an inscription: “This house hates
evil, punishes crimes, guards rights and honors virtue”. Today, the new building is
inscribed with words: “Weapons have given you independence. Laws will give you
freedom.” But sadly justice remains lacking in this country.
As I’m about to finish this column about my lack of hope for Colombian justice, I
remember another important thing. These events teach you to appreciate people.
Life goes by, and time leaves us behind just like our loved ones. When they are
taken without explanation, preventing you from learning from them, it is horrible. So
before finishing this column, I went to my father to ask him what he thinks about
this issue, about his hopes for my mother’s case.
Together my father and I agreed that we live in an unequal and dangerous country,
in which no-one knows how many people die each day. Every day in Colombia
people disappear without explanation, and murders and torture take place.
Poverty, lack of communication, unemployment, and lack of tolerance all lead to
violence. The army, the state and its institutions maintain this the imbalance for
their own interests, and not for those of the people. Brute strength is what prevails
in the country – that Colombian term “berraquera,” being tougher and meaner than
other people to defend one’s own interests, is what keeps the violence rates sky
high. And yet we measure progress in economic terms, ignoring the human
development index, which is the real way we should measure progress and
development, with equality for all, institutional transparency, and a state that
guarantees its citizens’ quality of life.
For all these reasons there must be a sentence; my mother’s killers must be
convicted of their crimes, not just for her sake but for the sake of Colombia, and of
justice.
The official version of the attack holds that, in an effort to complete one of the 2
objectives they had assaulted the palace for, the M-19 guerrillas burnt different
criminal records containing proof and warrants against many members of the
group. It is also believed, but argued whether they also burnt records against Pablo
Escobar, one of the nation's biggest drug traffickers at the time.[citation needed]
However, "no one knows with absolutely certainty what happened. The results of
the tests carried out later by ballistics experts and investigators demonstrated the
most likely cause to have been the recoil effect of the army's rockets. Tests proved
that if fired by a soldier standing twenty feet of wood-lined walls of the library that
housed Colombian legal archives, the intense heat generated by the rocket's rear
blast could have ignited the wooden paneling. In any event, in a shelved area
stacked high with old papers, files, books, and newspapers, the quantity of
explosives used by the military virtually guaranteed a conflagration." In total, over
6000 different documents were burned. The fire lasted about 2 days, even with
efforts from firemen to try and smother the flames. An investigated theory to the
"disappearance" of the missing entities in the siege is that they were charred in the
fire, and were not able to be identified in any way, and without having been found,
these entities are regarded as missing in action. This theory is still being studied in
the different trials of the case.
Colombian palace of justice siege

More than 100 people died during the final assault on the Palace. Those killed
consisted of hostages, soldiers, and guerrillas, including their leader Andrés
Almarales and four other senior commanders of M-19. After the raid, another
Supreme Court justice died in a hospital after suffering a heart attack.
The siege of the Palace of Justice and the subsequent raid was one of the
deadliest attacks in Colombia in its war with leftist rebels. The M-19 group was still
a potent force after the raid, but was severely hampered by the deaths of five of its
leaders. In March 1990, it signed a peace treaty with the government.
After the siege, firemen rushed to the site of the assault and smothered the few
flames left in the palace. Other rescue groups assisted with removing debris and
rubble left after the siege.
President Betancur went on national TV on the night of the 7th, saying he took full
responsibility for the "terrible nightmare." He offered condolences to the families of
those who died — civilians and rebels alike — and said he would continue to look
for a peaceful solution with the rebels. Exactly a week later, on 14 November, he
would offer condolences for another tragedy: the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz
volcano, which killed 25,000 people in the Armero tragedy. "We have had one
national tragedy after another", he said.