Post by gallito on Nov 8, 2015 23:48:30 GMT -5
Colombia’s president has apologized for a 1985 army raid on the country’s supreme court in which nearly 100 people were killed after the building was taken over by guerrillas.
Juan Manuel Santos spoke at the rebuilt Palace of Justice during a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the deadly siege, one of the darkest chapters in Colombia’s recent history.
He was acting in accordance with a ruling last year by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemning the state for the disappearance of 12 people, most of them cafeteria workers, who were taken alive from the building by the army during the 48-hour standoff.
The president apologized by name to each of their families and vowed to spare no effort to locate the remains of those whose whereabouts are still unknown. He also used the occasion to urge a deal to end Colombia’s decades-old conflict, echoing the supreme court president’s plea to armed rebels and government forces 30 years ago.
“Stop the gunfire,” Santos said. “Stop the gunfire in Colombia forever.”
Even in a country long accustomed to political violence including assassinations, civilian massacres and the extermination of thousands of leftist activists, the attack on the court by the now defunct M-19 rebel movement and the government’s heavy-handed response stand out because the events occurred in the very heart of Colombian democracy.
Almost universally Colombians refer to the incident as a “holocaust”, for the blaze that consumed the night sky after troops backed by tanks and bombs stormed the building.
Santos’ apology comes after a string of advances in the investigation of the siege, whose victims included 11 supreme court justices. Last month authorities located in a government warehouse and a potter’s cemetery in Bogotá the remains of three people who were escorted alive from the court and later disappeared in circumstances that remain murky.
The breakthrough was prompted in part by Santos’ three-year-drive to sign a peace agreement with another insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc. As a deal to halt a half-century of fighting nears, emboldened victims and other witnesses have gradually begun to reveal old secrets about state security forces’ role in abuses.
At Friday’s ceremony victims’ family members, including some who were barely born at the time, recalled decades of futile struggle to learn the truth.
Hector Beltrán, whose son was one of the disappeared cafeteria workers, denounced what he called a “pact of silence” that has left unpunished a man who he and many others blame for the deaths: then president Belisario Betancur, whom the M-19 rebels had sought to put on trial when they seized the court 6 November 1985.
“Those whose obligation it was to protect us instead disappeared our loved ones and then devoted themselves to dishonoring, slandering, attacking and degrading their memory,” Beltran said.
While two army commanders have been sentenced in the past decade for the forced disappearances, many unanswered questions still surround the tragic events – chief among them whether the guerrillas’ attack was paid for by the Medellín cartel of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.
At the time, the court was debating the legality of extraditing cartel capos to be tried in the United States. Escobar associates said later that he allied with the rebels, who opposed extradition on nationalist grounds, to destroy incriminating evidence in the court’s vaults.
Escobar’s purported involvement was depicted in this year’s Netflix series Narcos, about the cocaine-fueled bloodbath that engulfed Colombia during the 1980s.
It’s also unclear whether Betancur, who was not at the ceremony, sanctioned the aggressive military response. Many have questioned his refusal to take a phone call from the court president pleading for negotiations, as well as a government order forcing TV networks to interrupt coverage of the standoff and broadcast a soccer match instead.
Betancur initially took full responsibility for the military’s actions, but after leaving office in 1986 he said he had lost control of the situation to his generals. The former president was absolved of wrongdoing by a congressional investigation at the time.
“If there were mistakes that I made, I ask my compatriots for forgiveness,” the 92-year-old said this week in Bogotá, breaking a long silence about his role in the events.
www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/colombia-president-apologizes-deadly-1985-army-raid-supreme-court
Juan Manuel Santos spoke at the rebuilt Palace of Justice during a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the deadly siege, one of the darkest chapters in Colombia’s recent history.
He was acting in accordance with a ruling last year by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemning the state for the disappearance of 12 people, most of them cafeteria workers, who were taken alive from the building by the army during the 48-hour standoff.
The president apologized by name to each of their families and vowed to spare no effort to locate the remains of those whose whereabouts are still unknown. He also used the occasion to urge a deal to end Colombia’s decades-old conflict, echoing the supreme court president’s plea to armed rebels and government forces 30 years ago.
“Stop the gunfire,” Santos said. “Stop the gunfire in Colombia forever.”
Even in a country long accustomed to political violence including assassinations, civilian massacres and the extermination of thousands of leftist activists, the attack on the court by the now defunct M-19 rebel movement and the government’s heavy-handed response stand out because the events occurred in the very heart of Colombian democracy.
Almost universally Colombians refer to the incident as a “holocaust”, for the blaze that consumed the night sky after troops backed by tanks and bombs stormed the building.
Santos’ apology comes after a string of advances in the investigation of the siege, whose victims included 11 supreme court justices. Last month authorities located in a government warehouse and a potter’s cemetery in Bogotá the remains of three people who were escorted alive from the court and later disappeared in circumstances that remain murky.
The breakthrough was prompted in part by Santos’ three-year-drive to sign a peace agreement with another insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc. As a deal to halt a half-century of fighting nears, emboldened victims and other witnesses have gradually begun to reveal old secrets about state security forces’ role in abuses.
At Friday’s ceremony victims’ family members, including some who were barely born at the time, recalled decades of futile struggle to learn the truth.
Hector Beltrán, whose son was one of the disappeared cafeteria workers, denounced what he called a “pact of silence” that has left unpunished a man who he and many others blame for the deaths: then president Belisario Betancur, whom the M-19 rebels had sought to put on trial when they seized the court 6 November 1985.
“Those whose obligation it was to protect us instead disappeared our loved ones and then devoted themselves to dishonoring, slandering, attacking and degrading their memory,” Beltran said.
While two army commanders have been sentenced in the past decade for the forced disappearances, many unanswered questions still surround the tragic events – chief among them whether the guerrillas’ attack was paid for by the Medellín cartel of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.
At the time, the court was debating the legality of extraditing cartel capos to be tried in the United States. Escobar associates said later that he allied with the rebels, who opposed extradition on nationalist grounds, to destroy incriminating evidence in the court’s vaults.
Escobar’s purported involvement was depicted in this year’s Netflix series Narcos, about the cocaine-fueled bloodbath that engulfed Colombia during the 1980s.
It’s also unclear whether Betancur, who was not at the ceremony, sanctioned the aggressive military response. Many have questioned his refusal to take a phone call from the court president pleading for negotiations, as well as a government order forcing TV networks to interrupt coverage of the standoff and broadcast a soccer match instead.
Betancur initially took full responsibility for the military’s actions, but after leaving office in 1986 he said he had lost control of the situation to his generals. The former president was absolved of wrongdoing by a congressional investigation at the time.
“If there were mistakes that I made, I ask my compatriots for forgiveness,” the 92-year-old said this week in Bogotá, breaking a long silence about his role in the events.
www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/colombia-president-apologizes-deadly-1985-army-raid-supreme-court