Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

Q&A: The Truth Is Slowly Coming Out

Constanza Vieira interviews RENÉ GUARÍN on Palace of Justice massacre

BOGOTA, Nov 12 2008 (IPS) - At 11:40 AM on Nov. 6, 1985 there were more than 300 people in the Palace of Justice, which lines one side of Bolívar square in the Colombian capital, when 35 guerrillas belonging to the 19 de Abril Movement (M-19) seized the building.

The aim of the M-19 nationalist guerrilla movement (which later became a political party) was to "try" the government of then president Belisario Betancur (1982-1986) for betraying a peace agreement signed in 1984. It also wanted to get peace talks going again and block the extradition of Colombians to the United States.

Just 25 minutes later, an all-out military and police assault began, to regain control over the building.

Oddly enough, the military siege was prepared beforehand, according to a civilian who carried out "dirty work" at the time for the army and now lives in exile, and to a document found by the attorney general’s office in the Defence Ministry.

The siege lasted 27 hours and no negotiations were undertaken.

The order given to the military to hold their fire, issued by radio from inside the building by Supreme Court president Alfonso Reyes when the insurgents were already giving up in the face of the heavy military response, was ignored.

President Betancur left the crisis in the hands of the army. Eleven Supreme Court magistrates, considered the most outstanding jurists of their generation, died, along with 80 other people. In addition, 11 people who worked in the cafeteria, or just happened to be there at the time, remain missing.

For several years after the tragedy, threats were received regularly by the families of the 11 people who disappeared from the cafeteria, at least two of whom were filmed leaving the courthouse alive.

And 10 years ago, Eduardo Umaña, the prominent human rights lawyer who was assisting the families in trying to find out what happened to their loved ones, was murdered in his office.

The M-19 demobilised in 1990 as the result of a peace agreement, which included an amnesty for those involved in the occupation of the court building, six of whom are still alive today. (It was originally reported that all of the rebels had died in the siege).

Curiously, over the past three year new evidence has gradually come to light, and more and more of the victims’ families have begun to doubt the official version of how and where their loved ones were killed. (See an earlier IPS story, COLOMBIA: New Videos Shed Light on Palace of Justice Massacre: https://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39068).

The disproportionate military response was questioned from the start. But since 2005, testimony emerging from various sources has implicated the armed forces in torturing people to death, forced disappearances, intentionally setting fire to the courthouse, and giving orders to kill witnesses, including injured civilians who had been taken from the Palace of Justice to the hospital.

The military officers who led the storming of the Palace of Justice continued their successful careers, and only now is the judicial system prosecuting several of them. However, no one has been convicted.

The fire that broke out a few hours after the army siege began not only claimed lives, but also destroyed numerous court records on cases in which members of the military were being charged with human rights violations. A judge concluded in 1989 that the fire was intentionally set. And according to witnesses, it was set by the security forces.

Both the Supreme Court and the Council of State – whose members were among the hostages taken by the M-19 – had recently handed down convictions of members of the armed forces in human rights cases.

According to Colombian journalist Maureén Maya, one faction of the M-19 had turned to drug lord Pablo Escobar – the then head of the powerful Medellín drug cartel who was killed in 1993 – for help in buying weapons for the occupation of the courthouse. But he merely warned the army, and did not provide assistance.

She said the insurgent group and the drug cartel saw eye to eye on one important point: they both opposed the extradition of Colombian nationals to the United States, an issue being considered at the time of the occupation of the Palace of Justice.

But "the drug mafia betrayed them," Maya told IPS last year. "It made a deal with the military, and the cartel and army decided to use that excellent opportunity to squash both the M-19 and the Supreme Court, which was investigating the military for human rights violations and was about to approve the extradition treaty."

While it has long been stated that the aim of the M-19 was to burn the extradition documents of drug traffickers in the courthouse, the originals were actually held elsewhere, in the Government Ministry.

The Supreme Court eventually set up a truth commission, comprised of three former Supreme Court presidents, in November 2005, to clarify what happened in those tragic hours. The final report is scheduled to come out in April 2009.

Meanwhile, for 23 years, computer engineer René Guarín has been trying to find out what happened to his sister Cristina.

His sister, who was 27 years old and had completed her undergraduate degree in social science, was doing a brief stint as cashier in the Palace of Justice cafeteria until December, when she planned to start a graduate degree in education at the Complutense University in Madrid.

In COLOMBIA: New Videos Shed Light on Palace of Justice Massacre, IPS reported that a videotape seized from Colonel Alfonso Plazas, who led the military assault, showed that Cristina Guarín left the courthouse alive and uninjured.

Her father, who refused to believe she was dead, wrote her 300 poems over the years. And until his death, in 2001, he continually searched for her among the mentally disturbed homeless people who wander the streets of downtown Bogotá.

"Leave that to God now," Cristina’s 85-year-old mother says about the fate of the seventh of her eight children. But René, who spoke to IPS, refuses to give up, despite the death threats he has received.

IPS: Is the truth starting to come out about what happened at the Palace of Justice? RENÉ GUARÍN: Apparently it is, but very slowly. And more is being discovered by the media than by the truth commission, which clearly is trying to take things out of context by depicting the occupation of the courthouse as merely a job the M-19 was carrying out for the drug traffickers. Justice cannot be served this way.

And now, on Oct. 30, under the argument that a legal deadline had expired, they released (retired) General Edilberto Sánchez (then B-2 intelligence chief for the 13th army brigade in Bogotá), who is accused by the attorney general’s office of forced disappearance.

And we hear the lies of (retired) Colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas, then commander of the Cavalry School, who was arrested on Jul. 14, 2007, and whose trial began on Jul. 26, 2008. He is the first member of the military prosecuted by the civilian courts on charges of forced disappearance.

IPS: According to you, what is Colonel Plazas lying about? RG: His lies…First of all, that "there are no ‘disappeared’ (victims of forced disappearance); everyone died on the fourth floor, in the fire."

He openly denies what the attorney general’s office has already established: that at least two "disappeared" persons left the Palace of Justice alive, and that Irma Franco (an M-19 guerrilla) was alive in the place where the army's B-2 intelligence service was operating.

His second lie is that the remains of the "disappeared" persons are in the National University’s forensic anthropology labs. That claim was shown to be false by DNA studies signed by 11 experts, who say the bodies of the "disappeared" are not among the remains of the Palace of Justice victims that the university has studied.

IPS: In the meantime, what is clear to the families about what happened there? RG: It is clear that the building was seized for what were obviously political reasons, and that the drug trafficking angle was not the only ingredient. That is proven by earlier events: there was a truce that was declared broken on Jun. 20, 1985, and the ceasefire agreements were violated by the government.

It is also clear that our family members never reappeared, either dead or alive. And our anguish is also clear, ever since we went to the forensic medicine department on Nov. 10, 1985, and didn’t find a thing.

IPS: Why do you think witnesses and evidence against the military are appearing now, after so many years have gone by? RG: I think many witnesses don’t see the members of the military of the past as such strong enemies today.

The case of the Palace of Justice perfectly reflects Colombia: impunity, lies, rewards for the victimisers, oblivion, and the worst thing: that since then, there have been 450 "palaces of justice". The killings here have been continuous, to gain control over land or to wipe out the opposition.

The most recent offensive in terms of crimes of the state has involved at least 1,000 young men killed by the army to present them as battlefield casualties.

Day by day, I gain a better understanding of why Colombia has more and more "Tirofijos" (Sureshot, the alias of the long-time FARC guerrilla leader who died of natural causes in March) and more and more Pablo Escobars.