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The Palace of Justice Siege
During the 6th and 7th of November the Palace of Justice in Bogota, Colombia was sieged by the guerrilla group M-19 and later, a further assault was made by the Forces of the State. Even though a plan from the M-19 Group was uncovered just a few days before, the 6th of November the building was without any vigilance and around midday the place was attacked by the guerrilla group. The members of the M-19 took all persons inside the Palace as hostages and demanded a series of requests to the National Government. Despite having hostages that included several magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice and from the Council of State, the President Belisario Betancourt and his government denied any negotiations and instead deployed an assault of the Palace with the Army Forces and the National Police. During the operation the magistrate Alfonso Reyes Echandía, President of the Supreme Court of Justice, requested in a radial transmission to the President to order a cease of fire and accept negotiations, but his call was not attended and the confrontation continued.
After 27 hours of confrontations in which the forces of the State employed war tanks and rockets that were fired against and inside of the Palace, the result was a victory for the army forces. However, the building was in ruins due to the confrontations and a fire that partially consumed the place set out. After the Siege there was around 100 people deceased including guerrilla group members and hostages – among them the President of the Supreme Court of Justice -. 12 persons were also missing.
Nowadays the families of the missing persons and the Colombian society in general demand to know of their whereabouts, due that several witnesses and videos taken by the press groups that covered the event have established that some of the hostages left the Palace alive with the Forces of State. According to testimonies from survivors many escaped from the Palace alive and were tortured in military garrisons after being rescued. Other testimonies from ex-militants that participated during the operations establish that the forces of the State excluded several survivors from the official lists of rescued persons who were led to be interrogated under torture and later on murdered and then disappeared. The testimonies, videos and forensic analysis have also established that survivors such as magistrates Manuel Gaona and Carlos Horacio Urán, and other guerrilla members, were executed by the Army Forces and later shown as killed in action or murdered by the M-19 group.
Since 2001 and after 15 years of struggle, threats, harassments and attacks to the families of the missing persons in their search to receive an answer about the whereabouts about their loved ones, attacks that included the murder of their representative, lawyer Jose Eduardo Umaña Mendoza, investigations lead to open processes againts high the then command members of the Army forces.
The 10th of December of 2014, the Human RIght´s Day, the Interamerican Court of Human Rights (CIDH abreviattion on spanish) sentenced the Colombian State as guilty of the facts for action and omission in crimes against humanity as forced disappreareance, tortures and extrajudicial executions. Aditonally the Court define condemned all of the public institutions involved for the irregularities, and the management of information and irregularities with the scene of the crime in which the action was executed in orderto promote impunity and hide the crimes committed. By these, the CIDH order the colombian state to take all of the actions needed in order to clarify what exactly happenned with the victims and for the truth about the facts. Several reparation meausures were ordered by the court with a deathline of 2 years for the completion since the pubblication of the sentence. One of these was a pubblic event, in which the President as highest representative of the state, had toadmit the international responsabilities for the crimes committed. This measure was accomplished on the commemoration of the events the 6th of November 2015. Anyway most ofthe measures that were ordered in manners as rehabilitation, satisfacción, material & inmaterial harm and compensatory indemnizations ordered by the internacional sentence and by senteces of the national jurisdiction have not been fullfilled yet. There are only 3 parents of the victims of forced disappearence alive and some of them looks like they are far away of recieving and living the accomplisment of this, when the truth stills seems so far away.
On October 2015, the General Prosecutor Office announce finding three of the twelve disappeared victims (Cristina del Pilar Guarín Cortés, Luz Mary Porterla León and the ocassional visitor Lucy Amparo Oviedo). Neverless there are a lot of inquieries for how they were killed. Within the last desclassified videos of the events, one of these victims was identified exitting the Palace of Justice alive after the assault in hands of the Army. These three findings were found in its majority on private cementries and the fragments of the body of the victim Oviedo was as one of the parts of another person buried in a mass grave in the Southern Cementery. Although the truth is still missing about how these persons were deceased and why and how. Also these facts opened new scars, new cases states of disappeared victims, since the bodies found as one of the victims of forced disappearence, Cristina Guarín was buried where it was Maria Isabel Ferrer other ocassional visitor, and the one of Luz Mary Portela León was the one of the victim of the court Libia Rincón Mora. For the case of Lucy Amparo Oviedo, her pieces were part of the rests of another person. Within the procedures that the Prosecutor Office did, it has to be highlited the lack of human touch, in the way this entity even took care about telling the families of these victims that the corps of their loved- ones were on a proccess of exhumation and the sons and daughters of the new dissapeared victims were notified just by the online newspapers of the country with the news of the findings. December 2015, there is an identification of Maria Isabel Ferrer where she was in her grave but only fragments of her feet.
The 14th November 2016 one of the missing persons who was even unknowned of this event, Maria Lida Mondol, was found and delivered to her family. The 16th of December 2015 the Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega was released by the Supreme Court of Justice since there were not enough proves that can determine the responsability of the Colonel in the forced disappeareances. Even though he has to continue testifying for the crimes after 8 years of prison in a militar guarrison and after accepting that one of the persons for who he was condemned was accepted by him, saying that he give Irma Franco alive to the Military Intelligence. Also the retired general Jesus Armando Arias Cabrales is waiting for the decision of the appeal of the sentences where he is condemned for the forced disappeareance of 5 workers of the cafeteria of the Palace, Carlos Augusto Rodriguez Vera, Bernardo Beltrán Hernández, David Suspes Celis, Luz Mary Portela León and the M19 guerrilla member Irma Franco. The 12th January 2016, the colonel Edilberto Sanchez Rubiano was condemned in the first judicial instance to 40 years of prison for the forced disappeareance of the cafeteria workers Carlos Rodríguez and Bernardo Beltrán Hernandez. He is not secluded since he suffers of blindness at his advanced age. Aditionally the mayor of the Police foces Óscar William Vásquez is also condemned to 40 yeras of prison for the crimes of forced disappearence. The determinant factos for these two last sentences were the recordings of a person of the military orders during the event in which there are clear orders as "kill them all", do not let in the Red Cross, and the answer within the conversations of the colonel Luis Carlos Sadovnik and Edilberto Sanchez Rubiano when they making identifications of the hostages where the order is "if the vest appears, the arm not".
Other fourteen members of the pubblic forces and the national police will have to declare between february and march of 2016. A general concern of this case is that this will be took by the special framework for peace derived from the current peace process at Habana with the FARC guerrillas. Transitional Justice will be applied exposing this case to impunity and with the lack of justice bargainning amnesties for truths that have been absent for more than three decades.
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