Palace of Justice siege

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Colombian Armed Conflicts
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Historical Events:
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Palace of Justice (1985)
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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 Colombian 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]

Contents 1 The siege 2 The assault 3 Aftermath 3.1 Alleged Mafia Links 3.2 Impunity 3.3 The Missing 3.4 2005-2006 Truth Commission 4 Notes 5 Further reading 6 External links

[edit] 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 federal judges. The President of the Supreme Court, 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]

[edit] The assault

The operation to retake the building was delegated by presidential order on General Jesus Armando Arias, commander of the Thirteenth Army Brigade stationed in Bogotá. He appointed Colonel Alfonso Plazas, commander of an armored cavalry battalion, to personally spearhed the operation. The retaking of the building began that same day and finally ended on November 7, when Colombian Army troops stormed the Palace of Justice, after having already occupied some of the first 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-9 was employed to knock down the building's massive doorway, and even made some direct hits against the structure's external walls. The night of the assault, when inquired by the media as to what exactly was the purpose for the presence of the armored cars on the scene, Colonel Plazas gave a subsequently famous reply, "Defending democracy, master" (The word "master", in Colombian slang, was used to refer to someone as "buddy" or "pal").^[4]

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

According to a surviving hostage, magistrate Hernando Tapias, at a certain point in time 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 their position remained under constant bombardment by the Colombian military, which continued to fire despite the magistrate's verbal pleas. Tapias has stated that the guerrillas then ordered the justices to line up and fired in their direction, 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 those of us who remain will die".^[5]

More than 100 people died during the final assault on the Palace. Those killed consisted of the 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.

[edit] 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. "We have had one national tragedy after another," he said.

This siege lead to the creation of the AFEUR unit within the Colombian Army to manage this kind of situations. 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.

[edit] Alleged Mafia Links

The U.S. and Colombia governments shortly after the siege asserted that druglords masterminded the operation in order to get rid of several criminal files lost during the event. The Special Commission of Inquiry, established by the Betancur government after intense public pressure^[6], released a June 1986 report which concluded that this was not the case.^[7] Most later observers have tended to undermine the claims of any close operational links between those parties and the M-19.^{[citation needed]}

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, confusingly told Cromos magazine in late 2005 that she now believes that the mafia may have financially supported the M-19. ^[8]

On the same day of the siege, the Supreme Court's "order of the day" 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. ^[9]

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. ^[10]

[edit] 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 would have been burned alive during the assault, as someone incinerated his body after pouring it with gasoline. The book also asserts that, after the siege was over, some twenty eight of the 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. ^[11]

Despite numerous investigations and lawsuits to date, no one has ever been punished with jailtime for the carnage at the Palace of Justice, and no definite responsibility has been fixed either 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.

[edit] The Missing

The eleven missing [12] Photos of the missing
Name	Occupation
Bernardo Beltrán Fernández	Cafeteria waiter[13]
Héctor Jaime Beltrán Fuentes	Cafeteria waiter[14]
Ana Rosa Castilblanco*	Assistant chef[15]
David Celis	Cafeteria Chef[16]
Norma Constanza Esguerra	Sold homemade pastries in cafeteria[17][18]
Cristina Guarín Cortés	Teller in cafeteria
Gloria Stella Lizarazo Figueroa	Cafeteria employee
Luz Mary Portela León	Cafeteria dishwasher[19]
Carlos Augusto Vera Rodríguez	Cafeteria manager[20]
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. [21]

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.^[22] The Special Commission of Inquiry confirmed the disappearance of Frano, and the judges requested that the investigation of her case be thorougly pursued.^[23]

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.^[24]

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 Generals 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. [25]

On August 22, 2006, Colombia's 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. Colombian 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. ^[26]

[edit] 2005-2006 Truth Commission

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. [27][28]

The Colombian 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]

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Carrigan, Ana (1993). The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy. Four Walls Eight Windows. 0941423824.
• Echeverry, Adriana, Ana María Hanssen (2005). Holocausto en el silencio. Editorial Planeta. (Spanish)
• Jimenez, Michael F. (September 5 1994). "Dead Beat: A Colombian Journalist's Life Inside the Cocaine Wars.". The Nation 259 (7): 246. (Book review)
• Jimeno, Ramón (1989). Noche de lobos. Siglo Ventiuno Editores. 9589518613. (Spanish)
• Peadar, Kirby (February 26 1994). "Palace where justice was put to death". The Irish Times: p. 8. (Book review)
• McClintick, David (November 28 1993). "Lost in the Ashes". The Washington Post: p. X5. (Book review)
• Riding, Alan (November 28 1993). "The Supreme Court Massacre". The New York Times: p. 9. (Book review)
• Weiner, Lauren (December 26 1993). "Buffoonish Armageddon at the 'Palace of Justice'". The Washington Times: p. B8. (Book review)

[edit] External links

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