THE PALACE OF JUSTICE SIEGE

On November 6, 1985, a group of 35 M-19 guerrillas entered the Palace of Justice in Bogotá (Colombia), for the purpose of presenting an “armed lawsuit to the Justices and convening a public trial against the government of President Belisario Betancur”.
The first people killed were the parking lot guards: Eulogio Blanco and Gerardo Diaz Arbeláez, from the Cobasec surveillance company, who could do nothing with their old guns in front of the rifles carried by the guerrillas. The manager of the building, Jorge Tadeo Moya Castro, realizing the situation, tried to flee and was riddled on the back.
For that moment, the members of the guerrilla who had entered in civilian clothes through the main door of the building, led by Alfonso Jacquin, had uncovered their weapons and under the shout “present and fighting”, fired gunshots indiscriminately; one of those bullets reached and killed the passerby Raúl Francisco Jimenez, who walked in the 8th st. A television camera recorded the incident.
Officials were laid upside down as harangues and gunshots continued. The Justices were identified and taken to other areas. The President of the Supreme Court, Alfonso Reyes Echandía, was taken hostage on the fourth floor, where Alfonso Jacquin uttered the phrase: “The President of the Republic has not answered the phone to the President of the Supreme Court, and he is going to die”.
When the Colombian Army began the operation to take back control, everything turned into chaos, of which there are many doubts about what happened inside the building, taking into account, so far, interest has been placed on the excesses of the Colombian Army, leaving aside the acts of M-19. Monica Murcia, daughter of Justice Humberto Murcia Ballén, for example, talked about how “my dad remembers how the M-19 shot the other Justices.”
Unfortunately, the peace process with the M-19 took place under the scheme of amnesties and pardons, leaving aside truth, forgiveness, and reparation; so we probably never know for sure what happened. In 1992, Judge Clemencia Garcia de Useche tried to open an investigation against the dome of the M-19, among them, the current president of the Republic of Colombia Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego - as an intellectual perpetrator-, for the events of the Palace of Justice, arguing that the atrocious crimes do not were included in the peace agreement; Nevertheless, she was prevented from proceeding with her case.
A few years ago it was clarified that the financing of the siege of the Palace of Justice came from the Medellín Cartel, headed by Pablo Escobar Gaviria, who, according to sources of this criminal organization, accepted the request made by Ivan Marino Ospina and Alvaro Fayad, with the condition of “to burn the files of all those who are going to be extradited from Colombia to the United States and to murder Reyes Echandía, Medellín Forero, Medina Moyano and Patiño Roselli, for traitors to the homeland”. The Truth Commission in its final report refers to the matter and points out that “Escobar gave two million dollars to Iván Marino Ospina, who was the head of the 19 April Movement (M-19), and members of that guerrilla group received weapons to carry out the siege.”
Nearly 40 years later, many are still waiting for the truth about what happened in this bloody event that claimed 94 souls.