6 Nov 1985 Jahr - Palace of Justice Siege

Beschreibung:

On November 6th 1985, a historic attack on the Colombian palace of justice took place, with guerilla group M19 holding the supreme court hostage. The group was motivated to take over the palace of justice as a symbolic gesture, in order to make clear their demands for political reform and social justice in Colombia. The resulting Colombian military response would take two days, and result in the destruction of most of the supreme court building and over a hundred civilian casualties, including half of the Colombian supreme court judges. The Colombian military response has come under a lot of scrutiny, as the operation involved individually rescuing hostages from the building. Although most rescued hostages were let free with little difficulty, a small number of hostages suspected to be undercover M-19 members were subject to torture at the hand of the police and were killed without a trial. Over two thirds of the roughly three hundred hostages were rescued in the first few hours, but the rest remained at the hands of M19 for the following few days, with the guerilla demanding that then Colombian president Belisario Betancur come to the palace to stand trial and negotiate, an offer that was swiftly refused. Additionally thousands of government documents in the palace were destroyed by a fire, the origins of which remain unknown. To this day theories and rumours exist around the siege, mainly around the suspected involvement of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel, who had a considerable amount of files against them burned in the fire. Additionally it has been suggested by Pablo Escobar’s son that Escobar himself paid the organisation millions of dollars prior to the siege, although his involvement has never been confirmed.

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