The Palace Siege: It's been 30 years since militants launched a devastating attack on Colombia's highest court
AP Photo/Carlos Gonzalez
On Wednesday, November 6, 1985, members of the Colombian guerrilla group M19, or the April 19 movement, stormed Colombia's Palace of Justice and held all 25 of the country's Supreme Court justices, and hundreds of other civilians, hostage.
Over the next two days, the Colombian army mounted an operation to retake the building and free the hostages. By the time the crisis was resolved, almost all of the 30 to 40 rebels were dead, more than 100 hostages had been killed or "disappeared," and 11 of the court's 25 justices had been slain.
'Restore order, but above all avoid bloodshed'
The M19 rebels, a left-wing group that later became a political party, took the court with the goal of forcing the justices to try then-President Belisario Betancur and his defense minister for violating a peace deal the Colombian government had reached with the rebels a year-and-a-half earlier.
M19 also opposed the government's move toward extraditing Colombians to the US, a point on which the rebels and Colombia's powerful drug traffickers agreed. During a radio broadcast from inside the court after the rebels seized the building, an M19 member said that their aim was "to denounce a Government that has betrayed the Colombian people."
The initial response of Betancur was: "Restore order, but above all avoid bloodshed." But after that, he reportedly "encouraged the army to do its dirty work in the name of preserving legality."
He also refused to take phone calls from the president of the Supreme Court, Justice Alfonso Reyes (who was being held hostage), or order a ceasefire to permit negotiations.
Not long after the rebels seized the five-story building, government forces used explosives and automatic weapons to retake some of the lower floors. In the process, they reportedly rescued about 100 of the hostages.
AP Photo
Records for about 6,000 criminal cases were destroyed, including files for the criminal case against the cartel boss Pablo Escobar, according to Mark Bowden's "Killing Pablo."
AP Photo/Joe Skipper
In 1989, a judge ruled that the fire had been intentionally set.
Witnesses said the security forces lit the blaze, while some have suggested the rebels set the fire at the behest of the drug traffickers who wanted to destroy evidence against them - according to both Bowden and Escobar's son, the Medellin drug boss paid M-19 $1 million for the job.
By the afternoon of November 7, the siege was over, and reporters were allowed to enter the building.
Freed hostages said that rebels had decided to kill their prisoners, including Supreme Court justices, that morning, "when they felt their situation was 'hopeless.'"
At the time, news reports quoted Col. Alfonso Plazas, who commanded government troops during the assault, as saying that the rebels had been "annihilated."
But testimonies and rulings that have been issued in the decades since depict an army that was indiscriminate in its efforts to end what some have called Colombia's "holocaust."
'The basic truth … has not been provided'
The attack had immediate political consequences for Colombia. According to Bowden's account, the siege "crippled the Colombian legal system" and sank President Betancur's efforts to reach peace agreements with both M19 and FARC rebels. (M19 disarmed and became a political party in 1989; FARC rebels have only recently agreed to a peace plan.)
AP Photo/Joe Skipper
Mounting evidence suggested that civilians were taken into custody and tortured by government forces after the attack. A report composed after the attack contained photos that suggested some hostages were killed by someone other than the rebels.
In June 2010, Col. Plazas, who led the army's assault, was convicted of the forced disappearance of 11 people who survived the attack on the building but were taken away by the army afterward and never seen again.
A US embassy cable from 1999 that was released by George Washington University's National Security Archive corroborated the finding against Col. Plazas, saying that Col. Plazas' soldiers "killed a number of M-19 members and suspected collaborators hors de combat ["outside of combat"], including the Palace's cafeteria staff."
AP Photo/Joe Skipper
In that same session, the Colombian government admitted that it deserved some blame for the deaths and disappearances, with a government representative saying that "the Colombian state will not cease efforts to know the truth and create justice."
Since that admission, investigations - and accusations - have continued. A lawyer working for many of the families of the disappeared said a 2013 Truth Commission showed that some in the military knew of M19's plot, but let it happen, hoping to launch a "ferocious response" against the guerrillas.
AP Photo
In October 2015, Colombia's attorney general announced an investigation into 14 members of the military and security services, including then intelligence chief Iván Ramírez Quintero. The attorney general said there was "sufficient evidence to infer the participation and knowledge of senior military commanders in the torture carried out."
AP Photo/Carlos Gonzalez, File
For some, though, it hasn't been enough.
"The basic truth, which we have always longed for, has not been provided because there has not been a policy by the state to seek out the truth behind the events," said Jorge Franco Pineda, the brother of Irma Franco Pineda.
- As Ilya Sutskever announces OpenAI exit, here’s a quick recap of his involvement in Sam Altman's firing last year
- DHFL scam, simplified: Here’s all about the Dheeraj Wadhawan case — allegedly India’s biggest banking loan fraud ever
- India-UK trade pact: Work in progress to resolve pending issues
- 5 most colourful mountains in the world
- Vivo takes the top spot in India: Top smartphone brands in Q1 2024
- Nothing Phone (2a) blue edition launched
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market