​               The Palace of Justice Siege​​

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During the 6th and 7th of November, the Palace of Justice at 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 1985 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 edification. After the Siege and the Assualt there was as result around 100 people deceased, including guerrilla group members and other hostages – among them the President of the Supreme Court of Justice and other. 12 persons that are 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 press groups that covered the event, established that some of the hostages exit the Palace of Justice alive with the Forces of State after the Assault. According to testimonies from survivors who  survived and that  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 30 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, there has been attacks including the murder of their representative, the lawyer Jose Eduardo Umaña Mendoza who helped in order that the Colombian Attorney Office opened a formal investigation for the forced disappearances of the 12 persons. After years of investigations and trials, the processes have led to the judgment of two military majors: Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega: condemned in June 2009 to 30 years of prison; while General Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales was condemned in April 2011 to 25 years of prison. Even though the sentences were well received by the families of the victims as small steps towards truth and justice, these sentences were immediatedly rejected by numerous strong members of the State including the presidents in office at the moment: Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos. Furthermore, the Colombian justice has not acted against other state agents involved in the forced disappearances neither it has heeded the claims of the families of the victims to link former President Belisario Betancourt and his government as responsables of the devastating raid during the Assault.
Today, when the struggle of the families of the missing and murdered persons completes more than three decades, the case was condemned by the the Inter – American Court of Human Rights. They have turned to this court looking for the justice that they have denied from since 1985.  The Interamerican Court condemned as guilty the State of Colombia but measures have not been implemented yet.
 

The truth, justice and compensation for the dignity of the victims and their families have been systematically violated by agents of the State. The calamity of having their loved ones uprooted from their families and social groups, as the murder of their lawyer Eduardo Umañá in 1998, the obstruction of justice, the public support that the presidents and other functionaries of the State gave to the sentenced generals and allegations that state that the missing persons did not exist at all, and that they were made up by their families and lawyers to slander the image of the Military Forces in order to ask for juicy indemnities when the case has spent more ressources in 30 years trying to defend itself with expensive lawyers. In that framework, even the objective of the struggle of the families of the victims is to know what happened with them and to get to know who are the responsables, the army forces and their partisans have made an effort in and out of the state to distort public discussion, accusing families of branding the agents of the State as criminals for stopping the attack of the M-19 group and claiming that the guerrilla group has the guilt of all disappearances and executions that took place after the Assault, even if some of these guerrilla members were also victims.  In this way they have tried to discredit the families of the victims, presenting them as enemies of the State arranged to resort to false witnesses, regardless that the authenticity of these has already been proven.
 

Despite all the persecution, the impunity and the slanderous rumors, these families have struggled to reach truth, justice and integral compensations. Even though some of their family members have already preished without knowing what really happened to their loved ones, and the fact that those responsible of their disappearances and murders are still living within impunity, even though they have been sentenced, the struggle againts injustice and oblivion continues. It is important to add that some of these family members never had the chance to get to know their relatives or had just few days of being born when their mothers or fathers were subjected to forced disappearances, and now they continue asking with their eldest members for the whereabouts of their victims.

 

Find more information of the case victims and the struggle of the families in the multimedia resources and references section.