Palace of Justice siege

Palace of Justice siege
Part of Colombian armed conflict
File:Tomapalaciojusticia.jpg The Palace of Justice being assaulted by the Colombian Army after the 19th of April Movement had taken over the building.
Date November 6, 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
Casualties and losses
120 killed on both sides

The Palace of Justice siege (Toma del Palacio de Justicia in Spanish) 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 all the rebels and 11 of the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead.^[1]

The siege

On November 6, 1985, 35 guerrillas burst into the Palace of Justice after arriving there in a stolen truck. The rebels killed the building's administrator and its few security guards, taking 300 people hostage, including the 24 justices and 20 other judges. The President of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Alfonso Reyes, was among those taken. About three hours after the initial seizure, government troops rescued about 200 hostages^[2] 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.

After the first hours of the siege, a fire broke out and burned numerous court records on the fourth floor, including the files of every extradition case.^[3]

The assault

The operation to retake the building was led by General Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales, commander of the Thirteenth Army Brigade in Bogotá. The retaking of the building began that day and ended on November 7, 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.

There is still confusion as to the details of the assault, especially what happened inside. Many hostages were said to have died in the crossfire between the rebels and government forces. It is believed that at least 60 hostages were moved to a public restroom in one of the upper floors by the guerrillas, and may have died when government troops used explosives to enter the building from the roof.

According to a surviving hostage, Hernando Tapias, a number of the justices in the restroom were executed by the M-19 rebels when they realized that the situation was "hopeless". The rebels were running out of ammunition and they were under constant fire from the Colombian military, who continued to shoot despite the magistrate's pleas. Tapias has said that the guerrillas then ordered the justices to line up and fired at them, killing some and wounding others. Afterwards, several of those wounded, including Tapias, were allowed to leave by a reluctant Andrés Almarales, who had initially said that "all of us who remain will die".^[4]

More than 100 people died during the final assault on the Palace. Those killed consisted of hostages, government workers, soldiers and all of the 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.

President Betancur went on national TV on the night of the seventh, 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 November 14, 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

1. Alfonso Reyes Echandía
2. Fabio Calderón Botero
3. Dario Velásquez Gaviria
4. Eduardo Gnecco Correa
5. Carlos Medellín Forero
6. Ricardo Medina Moyano
7. Alfonso PatiDo Rosselli
8. Manuel Gaona Cruz
9. Horacio Montoya Gil
10. Pedro Elías Serrano Abadía
11. Fanny González Franco
12. Dante Luis Fiorillo Porras

Alleged Mafia Links

The U.S. and Colombian governments shortly after the siege asserted that drug lords masterminded the operation in order to get rid of various criminal files lost during the event. The Special Commission of Inquiry, established by the Betancur government after intense public pressure,^[5] released a June 1986 report which concluded that this was not the case.^[6] Most later observers have tended to undermine the claims of any close operational links between those parties and the M-19.

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. ^[7]

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. ^[8]

Mauricio Gaona and Carlos Medellín Becerra, the sons of two of the murdered Supreme Court magistrates, have pushed for further investigations into the presumed links between the M-19 and the Medellín Cartel drug lords, arguing that they have evidence that may prove relevant upon judicial review. 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. ^[9]

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. ^[10]

Despite numerous investigations and lawsuits to date, impunity still prevails: no one has ever been punished with jail time for the carnage at the Palace of Justice, and no definite responsibility has been fixed on the government, the M-19, or on both parties. 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.

The Missing

The eleven missing [11] Photos of the missing
Name	Occupation
Bernardo Beltrán Fernández	Cafeteria waiter[12]
Héctor Jaime Beltrán Fuentes	Cafeteria waiter[13]
Ana Rosa Castilblanco*	Assistant chef[14]
David Celis	Cafeteria Chef[15]
Norma Constanza Esguerra	Sold homemade pastries in cafeteria[16][17]
Cristina Guarín Cortés	Teller in cafeteria
Gloria Stella Lizarazo Figueroa	Cafeteria employee
Luz Mary Portela León	Cafeteria dishwasher[18]
Carlos Augusto Vera Rodríguez	Cafeteria manager[19]
Gloria Anzola de Lanao	Niece of Aydee Anzola, state official
Irma Franco Pineda	Law student, M-19 member

At least 11 people disappeared during the events of the siege, most of them cafeteria workers, and their final fate has yet to be determined. It has been speculated that their remains may be among a number of unidentified 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. [20]

One of the disappeared was a law student and M-19 guerrilla named Irma Franco. Franco was seen by several hostages. She left with several hostages and was never seen again.^[21] The Special Commission of Inquiry confirmed Franco's disappearance, and the judges requested that the investigation of her case be thoroughly pursued.^[22]

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.^[23]

Members of the military have claimed that they could have been guerrilla operatives in disguise which were working in the building under fake identities.

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.

Ana Carrigan, investigative reporter and author of The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy, was given a cassette tape in May 1991 from the Bogotá Attorney General's office. The cassette tape, according to its own audio content, appeared to be from dissident B-2 agents, dropped off anonymously in the Attorney General's Office a week after the siege. The authors identify themselves on the tape as a group of noncommissioned officers in the B-2 army intelligence service. The dissident B-2 agents assert that seven prisoners were taken to a nearby military compound and tortured by the Intelligence and Counter Intelligence Battalion and these B-2 agents were forced to watch. The authors of the tape identify four of the cafeteria workers and claim they saw one prisoner drowned by interrogators. [24]

Recent 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. [25][26]

Judicial Processes

On August 22, 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. ^[27]

Former Col. Sánchez was then detained. In May of 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.^[28]

2005-2006 Truth Commission

The Supreme Court created a Truth Commission in order to restart the investigation, in an attempt to provide as much closure as possible to the impunity still surrounding the tragic events of the siege. The Commission officially began its work on November 3, 2005 and according to one of its members, Judge Jorge Aníbal Gómez, results are expected by November 2006. ^[29] Congressman Gustavo Petro of the former M-19 has welcomed the decision and asked all surviving members of the M-19 to collaborate with its work. [30]

Many of the surviving individuals involved are to be interviewed by the Commission. Several private hearings had already taken place by March 2006, including one in which former President Belisario Betancur participated. Betancur has also willingly testified before the Attorney General's office.

According to the newsweekly Semana, the Truth Commission may have found surprising new details about the tragedy, and the sessions may be being recorded on video in order to preserve as much accuracy as possible. ^[31]

B-2 Vault

On May 14 2007, El Tiempo published a report saying that Colombian prosecutors had found a secret vault of the former B-2 of the Colombian Army, which contained the wallet of Carlos Horacio Urán, an auxiliary justice of the Council of State who died during the siege, along with a list of "gunned down guerrillas", where his name was listed next to Manuel Gaona Cruz.^[32]

The wallet of Urán contained his ID, driver's license, and other personal effects. The wallet had a hole, apparently from a bullet. Urán's widow explained that the auxiliary justice carried the wallet in the upper pocket of his jacket, and explained that, after the siege ended, the corpse was given back to her with a bullet wound to the head and completely naked.^[33]

Along with the "gunned down guerrillas" list, government investigators found armbands of the Police's F-2 intelligence outfit, B-2 ID badges, two police badges and some rifle ammunition. There was also a document detailing a list of people that were "detained" and taken to B-2 installations, among them seven drivers, without specifying who they were.^[34]

Virginia Vallejo’s Testimony

On July 11 2008, Virginia Vallejo, the television anchorwoman who was romantically involved with Pablo Escobar from 1983 to 1987, was asked to testify in the reopened case of the Palace of Justice. In the Colombian Consulate in Miami, where she is a political asylum petitioner, 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 August 29 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, Vallejo told Colombian radio stations that her testimony had been leaked to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo and claimed that it was adulterated in order to favor the military and former presidential candidate Alberto Santofimio.

Notes

1. ^ Livingstone, Grace (2004). Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War. Rutgers University Press. p. 55. ISBN 0813534437. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
   Pearce, Jenny (1990). 1st (ed.). Colombia:Inside the Labyrinth. London: Latin America Bureu. p. 181. ISBN 0906156440. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: editors list (link)
2. ^ Echeverry, Adriana (2005). Holocausto en el silencio. Editorial Planeta. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) p. 156
   
3. ^ World History of Organized Crime - Disc 2 (DVD). 2002. {{cite AV media}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |crew= (help); Unknown parameter |distributor= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help) Volume two contains "China," "India," and "Colombia."
4. ^ Echeverry, Adriana; Ana María Hanssen, p. 31
5. ^ Echeverry, Adriana; Ana María Hanssen, p. 158-163
6. ^ Carrigan, Ana (1993). The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy. Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 0941423824. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) p. 268, "Judicial workers are on strike nationwide. The families of the slain advised the government to stay away from the funerals. President Betancur sends wreaths to the Church, the families return them to the Presidential Palace. The twelve surviving Supreme Court Justices announce a boycott of the official government memorial service."
7. ^ Carrigan, p. 263-264, 266, 281
   McClintick, David (1993). "Lost in the Ashes". The Washington Post: p. X5. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
8. ^ Carrigan, p. 272
9. ^ Carrigan, p. 279
10. ^ Carrigan, p. 265
11. ^ Carrigan, p. 269-270
12. ^ Carrigan, p. 280
13. ^ Carrigan, p. 270-271
14. ^ Carrigan, p. 275
15. ^ "Por video y testimonios reabren caso del Palacio". El Tiempo. August 23, 2006. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
16. ^ "Comisión de la Verdad citará al ex presidente Belisario Betancur por toma del Palacio de Justicia". El Tiempo. November 10, 2005. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
17. ^ "Armando el rompecabezas". Semana. March 25, 2006. Retrieved 2006-04-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
18. ^ "Un Grito por el Palacio". Cromos. November 25, 2005. Retrieved 2006-04-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. ^ "Palacio de Justicia, 20 años de dolor". El País. November 7, 2005. Retrieved 2006-04-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
    *"Diez fallos que hicieron historia". El Espectador. October 9, 2005. Retrieved 2006-04-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
20. ^ "M-19 cambió drogas por armas". El País. October 6, 2005. Retrieved 2006-04-03. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
21. ^ "En bóveda del B-2 apareció la billetera de magistrado muerto en el Palacio de Justicia". El Tiempo. May 14, 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Further reading

• Carrigan, Ana (1993). The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy. Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 0941423824. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Echeverry, Adriana (2005). Holocausto en el silencio. Editorial Planeta. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) (Spanish)
• Jimenez, Michael F. (1994). "Dead Beat: A Colombian Journalist's Life Inside the Cocaine Wars". The Nation. 259 (7): 246. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Book review)
• Jimeno, Ramón (1989). Noche de lobos. Siglo Ventiuno Editores. ISBN 9589518613. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (Spanish)
• Peadar, Kirby (1994). "Palace where justice was put to death". The Irish Times: p. 8. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Book review)
• McClintick, David (1993). "Lost in the Ashes". The Washington Post: p. X5. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Book review)
• Riding, Alan (1993). "The Supreme Court Massacre". The New York Times: p. 9. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Book review)
• Weiner, Lauren (1993). "Buffoonish Armageddon at the 'Palace of Justice'". The Washington Times: p. B8. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Book review)
• Vallejo, Virginia. (September 2007). “Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar” pages 230 to 266. Random House Mondadori 2007.
• Vallejo, Virginia. “Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar” 2010.

External links

• Photos of the siege Alternate
• Translation of Spanish Wikipage (Toma del Palacio de Justicia de Colombia en 1985)