• by Constanza Vieira (bogota)
• Friday, October 09, 2009
• Inter Press Service

A declassified U.S. State Department cable dated January 1999 blames Colombian soldiers for the killings of civilians rescued by the military operation to retake the Palace of Justice from guerrillas who had seized the building in November 1985.

The document was obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA), which requests and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The 1999 cable had been classified until January 2024 by then U.S. ambassador to Colombia Curtis Kamman.

The cable wired from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá to the State Department says retired Colonel Alfonso Plazas 'commanded the November 1985 raid on the Supreme Court building after it had been taken over by the M-19. That raid resulted in the deaths of more than 70 people, including eleven Supreme Court justices. Soldiers killed a number of M-19 members and suspected collaborators hors de combat, including the Palace's cafeteria staff.'

The information in the document, which was published by the NSA Wednesday, 'is the clearest, most concise statement we have seen in declassified records about the army's responsibility for the deaths and disappearances in the Palace of Justice case,' said Michael Evans, director of the NSA's Colombia documentation project.

Now - as Colombia approaches the 24th anniversary of what is known locally as 'the Holocaust' - 'is the time for the U.S. government to come forward with all human rights related information it has pertaining to the Palace of Justice tragedy,' Evans urged in a statement issued Thursday.

The Palace of Justice, where the Supreme Court is housed, was seized along with some 300 hostages by 35 members of the now-defunct M-19 guerrillas on Nov. 6, 1985.

The 27-hour battle to regain control of the building marked a 'before' and 'after' in terms of human rights violations in this South American country, which has been in the grip of civil war for nearly half a century.

The siege ended with the courthouse up in flames. In 1989, a judge concluded that the fire was intentionally set — by the security forces, according to witnesses. The innumerable legal files destroyed included all of the requests for the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States.

The nearly 100 people killed that day included 11 of the country's most brilliant jurists, among them Supreme Court president Alfonso Reyes Echandía.

Eleven people - mainly cafeteria staff — are still missing. Video recordings and other evidence show that they were rescued from the building, and prosecutors have presented proof that they were taken to the Cavalry School, commanded by Plazas, where they were apparently tortured to death.

Plazas is currently facing trial for the forced disappearance of 10 civilians (cafeteria staff and others) and one woman guerrilla fighter who left the Palace of Justice alive.

According to the testimony of former members of the security forces, the insurgent was tortured for three months inside an ambulance in a military intelligence unit.

The representative of the Procuraduría General de la Nación (office of the inspector general) argued Thursday that the declassified State Department document cannot be introduced as evidence, because that stage of the case against Plazas is closed. But the judge is under no obligation to follow the Procuraduría's recommendations on the matter.

Rafael Barrios, the lawyer representing the families of the victims of forced disappearance, requested that the cable be accepted as evidence, saying it provides significant proof that Plazas was responsible for the disappearance of the rescued civilians.

Barrios, a member of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, a local human rights group, said steps are also being taken to introduce the document as evidence in the cases against Plazas's immediate superior, General Jesús Armando Arias; the commander of a military intelligence unit, General Iván Ramírez; and other former members of the intelligence services.

The declassified cable describes a Jan. 13, 1999 meeting organised in Bogotá by the Colombian military brass, who invited representatives of '12-14 local human rights NGOs,' although 'only four prominent human rights opinion leaders attended the meeting,' along with a representative of the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights .

The U.S. embassy's political officer was also present, at the specific invitation of then Defence Minister Rodrigo Lloreda.

The central focus of the meeting was the military's rejection of reforms to the military justice system 'to counteract continuing impunity of officers accused of human rights abuses,' says the cable.

'Other than the issue of military judiciary reform, little of substance was discussed, and major human rights issues of the day were omitted,' adds the summary of the 'armed forces/NGOs meeting,' which was 'poorly attended' and 'vague' according to the document.

The cable attributed 'the lack of true discussion to 'fear' among the NGO representatives that they would be threatened and perhaps harmed if they aggressively and publicly challenged the military.'

In fact, one had received telephone threats, 'which they supposed to have come from the military,' it adds.

'The presence among the 'NGO representatives' of two military officers, (one active duty, one retired), who killed time with lengthy, pro-military diatribes, also detracted from the military-NGO exchange,' it says. One of the two was retired Colonel Plazas, representing the so-called 'Office for Human Rights of Retired Military Officers'.

Evans commented to IPS that 'even if the document had been in our database earlier, it is likely that previous searches for information on Col. Plazas Vega would not have found this document since his name is misspelled as 'Plazas Vargas'.'

'I discovered this recently declassified document only recently while researching the El Salado case,' he added, referring to one of the bloodiest massacres committed by the far-right paramilitaries, in which at least 66 civilians were killed in February 2000.

The meeting described by the State Department cable was the fifth of its kind, and was chaired by General Rafael Hernández, then armed forces chief of staff.

A week before the meeting, a demilitarised area had been created in the municipality of Caguán in southern Colombia, to host peace talks between the government of then President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, which were very powerful at the time.

But neither 'the ongoing peace negotiations nor last week's exceptionally bloody paramilitary offensive' were discussed, the cable notes.

It was precisely the announcement of the creation of the Switzerland-sized demilitarised zone by then presidential candidate Pastrana in May 1998, to hold peace talks with the FARC, that spurred a paramilitary offensive around the country, which left thousands of civilians dead and continued until the talks collapsed in February 2002, towards the end of the Pastrana administration.

The effectiveness of military justice

Then deputy army commander Néstor Ramírez said during the meeting that the Colombian military judiciary 'had a strong record of arriving at just decisions,' according to the cable.

Ramírez cited two 'supposed examples: the military justice system's decision to drop all charges' against retired General Farouk Yanine Díaz, who died this year, and the 12-month sentence handed down to Colonel Marco Báez Garzón, says the document.

The author of the cable comments: 'strange cases to put on a pedestal' because of 'the notorious human rights allegations against General Yanine' and 'Colonel Báez's link with the Segovia massacre,' in which 43 civilians were killed in 1988 in the northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia.

The cable also points out that in 1998, the civilian courts convicted five armed forces officers for their role in the Segovia massacre, while the military judiciary exonerated them.

'The army shouldn't combat paramilitaries'

The cable also says then deputy army commander Ramírez said in the meeting that the army 'had no business pursuing paramilitaries, as (they) were apolitical common criminals and therefore did 'not threaten constitutional order through subversive activities,' as do politically-motivated guerrillas.'

'Ramírez described a 'threat to constitutional order' as the constitutionally-mandated trigger for army action,' and thus ascribed all 'responsibility for action against paramilitaries' to the national police, the cable adds.

The ultra-right-wing paramilitary death squads, closely linked to the drug cartels, were equipped with weapons exclusive to the army.

Since agreeing to a demobilisation process in talks with President Álvaro Uribe launched in 2002, the paramilitary chiefs have said in numerous statements before the justice system that they worked closely with the military.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service