Palace of Justice Siege
| Palace of Justice siege | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Colombian armed conflict | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Army of Colombia | 19th of April Movement (M19) | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 48 Colombian Soldiers dead | 35 M19 members dead | ||||||
| 98 dead 7 disappeared | |||||||
The Palace of Justice siege (Toma del Palacio de Justicia in Spanish) was a 1985 attack against the Supreme Court of Colombia, in which members of the M-19 marxist guerrilla group took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, Colombia, and held the Supreme Court hostage, intending to hold a trial against President Belisario Betancur. Hours later, after a military raid, the incident left almost half of the 25 Supreme Court Justices dead.
The military's role in the siege has been described as a holocaust and massacre by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
On 6 November 1985, at 11:35 a.m., three vehicles holding 35 guerrillas (25 men and 10 women) stormed the Colombian Palace of Justice, entering through the basement. Meanwhile, another group of guerrillas disguised as civilians took over the first floor and the main entrance. The guerrillas killed security guards Eulogio Blanco and Gerardo Díaz Arbeláez as well as building manager Jorge Tadeo Mayo Castro.
Jorge Medina -a witness located in the basement at the start of the siege- said that "suddenly, the guerrillas entered the basement in a truck. They opened fire with their machine guns against everyone who was there". The official report judged that the guerrillas planned the takeover operation to be a 'bloody takeover'. According to these official sources the guerrillas "set out to shoot indiscriminately and detonate building-shaking bombs while chanting M19-praising battle cries."
The M-19 lost one guerrilla and a nurse during the initial raid to the building. After the guerrillas took care of the security personnel guarding the building, they went on to install armed posts at strategic places, such as the stairs and the fourth floor. A group of guerrillas, led by Commander Luis Otero, got to the 4th floor and kidnapped the President of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Alfonso Reyes Echandía.
In the meantime many hostages took refuge in empty offices on the first floor, where they hid until around 2 pm.
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Wikipedia