The Attorney General’s Office believes that there is enough evidence against Carlos Castaño, the head of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (acronym AUC in Spanish). Evidence points towards Castaño as the person who ordered the crime, as well as towards Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo, a.k.a Bochas, as the person who allegedly carried out the crime. Leads pointing towards military involvement were dismissed for lack of evidence.

The José Alvear Commission presented a lawsuit against the Colombian Government on behalf of the Garzón family for not having given enough protection to Jaime Garzón during his attempts to free kidnapped hostages and for the alleged participation of members of the military in the murder.

Meanwhile, the Colombian Commission of Jurists is preparing a complaint to present to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The IAPA investigation found that the Attorney General’s Office, without much regard for evidence, dismissed leads that implicated the military in the murder.

Jaime Garzón was murdered on the morning of August 13, 1999 on his way to work at the Radionet radio station in downtown Bogotá, a few blocks away from police headquarters. He was driving a Jeep Cherokee SUV when hired hit men on a white motorcycle, with covered plates, shot him to death.

Garzón was 39 years old. He was raised in La Perseverancia, a middle class neighborhood of Bogotá, and studied Law at the National University as well as Political Science at Javieriana University. At 18, he joined the José Solano Sepúlveda guerrilla faction of the National Liberation Army (acronym ELN in Spanish). He never took part in military actions, and was associated for only four months with the subversives.

Soon after his return to Bogotá, he was appointed deputy mayor of the town of Sumapaz by the then mayor of Bogotá, Andrés Pastrana, who replaced him some time after because he supposedly allowed for a brothel to be run in the area. Later, this was found to be false and was instead determined that Garzón had built a health center, school, and the only street in Sumapaz during his term in office.

On the television program, Zoociedad, Garzón brought political satire to journalism. On Quac, another one of his television programs, he mocked the way his journalist colleagues reported Colombian news. Among the well-known personalities he portrayed was Godofredo Cínico Caspa, a right wing pseudo lawyer and intolerable shyster from Bogotá. He also played Heriberto de la Calle, a shoe shiner who feigned to be the country’s moral conscience.

Additionally, he also portrayed Dioselina Tibaná, the imprudent cook of Nariño Palace (residence of the President) during the administration of former President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998). He also played the doorman of the Colombia Building, Néstor Elí, official spokesperson for the Samper administration and for those opposed to the trial against the “Samper for President” fundraising campaign whose proceeds came from drug trafficking. Each morning, during the last year of his life, he analyzed Colombian politics at the Radionet radio station run by journalist Yamit Amat.

Through the support of the Anti-Kidnapping Czar of the time, Fernando Brito, Garzón began a mediation attempt for the liberation of a group of people who had been kidnapped by the FARC in March 1998, by a commander known as Romaña. He also acted as negotiations advisor with the insurgents for the Government of Cundinamarca Province.

The negotiations led to his involvement in the search for peace with other top leaders of the national political arena. He made contact with the leadership of the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and later with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Months before his murder, in the house of his life-long companion, Gloria Hernández, whom everyone knew as Tuti, several high-level leaders met with him, including former Presidents, journalists, and businessmen, to discuss the need for a negotiated settlement in the armed conflict.

In addition, weeks before his death, he was able to convoke a group of influential leaders in politics, the media, academia and the business community to sign a letter addressed to the Government and to the leadership of the ELN with the aim of not only seeking the release of the kidnapped hostages, but to reinitiate peace talks with the guerrillas; a process that had been halted because of public unrest after the kidnapping of parishioners in a church in the city of Cali.

“Garzón had become the shoulder that all the relatives of the kidnapped used to cry on. They sought him at his home, at his work, to ask him to intervene on behalf of the kidnapped,” Congressman Antonio Navarro Wolf told the IAPA.

Garzón had helped free two North American ornithologists, a Japanese, an Israeli citizen, the Italian Vito Candela, and the former Mayor of Soacha, among others.

Navarro never got a chance to talk to Garzón before his murder despite the fact that the journalist had been desperately looking for him to tell him something. “We were neighbors. We lived in the same building. He told me that he had something very important to tell me but they killed him before we could meet.”

Some journalists reported at the time that Garzón did not perform these deeds unselfishly but rather sought financial gain from the release of the kidnapped hostages, which caused the right wing to peg him as the diplomat for the guerrillas. Castaño, the AUC leader, identified him as a military target since the military were not in favor of his actions. Furthermore, many believed his work to release kidnapped persons only served to encourage further such abductions.

According to Navarro, the military thought that Garzón had become the Alvaro Leyva of the ELN, since Garzón, as did former Minister Leyva, had regular contact with the FARC guerrillas, as well as conversations with the ELN.

“I also remember that Garzón once warned a soldier not to mess with him because he wouldn’t hesitate to file a complaint against him,” Navarro said. The IAPA found out that Garzón had discovered that some members of the Thirteenth Brigade in Bogotá sold arms and even kidnapped hostages for the FARC guerrillas.

During a dinner party at the house of former Defense Minister, Rafael Pardo Rueda, Garzón took advantage of the opportunity to speak with Defense Minister, Rodrigo Lloredo, whom he asked to speak to the military to explain what his job entailed, since General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel did not want to meet with him. Pardo Rueda confirmed to the IAPA that this conversation did not result in anything.

In sum, Jaime Garzón was a man who lived for journalism and for what he could do for Colombia. He was abreast of all national current events. The documents that were found in the car that Garzón was driving at the time of his murder only further prove his knowledge of Colombian affairs. One such example is a letter from the Congressman of the revamped guerrilla movement M19, Antonio Navarro Wolf, to Nobel Prize laureate in Colombian literature, Gabriel García Márquez, in which he asks García Márquez to join those seeking peace with the ELN. Another example is a book on drug trafficking entitled “The Cocaine Cowboys”, a document on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his alleged relationship with the FARC guerrillas. Other items found include a document on drug traffickers Chepe Santacruz and Pablo Escobar, a fax coming from Villaviciencio addressed to the commander of the FARC guerrillas, Romaña; and other letters about the paramilitary groups.

The same day of Garzón’s murder, Castaño was accused of ordering his homicide. However, the leader of the paramilitary group denied that he was involved. A few days later, another theory arose that it could have been the FARC taking advantage of a threat that the paramilitary made to Garzón to smear his image. Factions of the ultra right wing of the military, who were upset over the prominence Garzón had gained during the mediations with the guerrilla groups, were also identified as possible suspects.

The first lead that pointed towards the military came from a prisoner, Sergio Alexander Sierra, who said that he was part of the Herrera gang that was led by the Cauca Valley drug traffickers. He told the Attorney General’s Office that two military generals, a former Senator as well as Castaño had contacted him in prison to follow through with Garzon’s murder and that they would pay him 200 million pesos. However, the Attorney General’s Office dismissed Sierra’s story because they found that he had not received a visit by any such general in jail, that he was not wealthy as he had claimed and that he did not come from the Herrera gang. The Attorney General claimed that what Castaño in reality sought was either to be transferred to a maximum security prison where the drug traffickers were kept to be able to work with them or he wanted to receive leniency by collaborating with the authorities.

A second lead came from an anonymous source to which a military informant revealed that he had participated in Jaime Garzón’s murder following orders from a soldier of the Thirteenth Brigade.

Investigators dismissed theories pointing towards the FARC and the military, as perpetrators of the homicide because the large majority of the stories came from witnesses whose statements were untrue. It was then that they focused their efforts on the theory that Castaño had ordered the killing of Jaime Garzón because he was considered a supporter of the guerrillas.

Attorney, Alirio Uribe, from the non-governmental organization, Attorney’s Cooperative, does not believe that the theory linking the military to the murder should be dismissed and has asked the Attorney General’s Office to implement new measures. One such measure is to subpoena of the commander of the Armed Forces, General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel. According to several witnesses, Jaime Garzón had had serious differences with General Mora Rangel and had even been refused an appointment to talk with him.

Uribe also requested that the Attorney General’s office investigate why so many false witnesses came out of this case, and to begin a criminal investigation into these false testimonies in order to find out if there was a cover up to protect the identity of the true assassins. Additionally, he asked them to look into the role the Administrative Security Department (acronym DAS in Spanish) played in the early investigations, since at least two witnesses were DAS informants.

Luz Marina Monzón, from the Colombian Commission of Jurists, shares Uribe’s viewpoint that the Attorney General’s Office focused only on the one theory that the murder had been ordered by Castaño and committed by Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo, a.k.a. Bochas, leaving behind facts of the case that should have been explored in order to determine if the perpetrators are linked to the military.

The facts of the case that attorney Monzón referred to, consist of information that the military informant José Robinson Ramírez Peña, a.k.a. El Chulo made to an anonymous source several days after the murder.

The source, who did not want to be identified, said that El Chulo told him that he had participated in Garzon’s murder: “I was one of the persons on the motorcycle. On one motorcycle was the person who pulled the trigger along with another person. Another person and I were on the other motorcycle, and in a minivan was a military officer and cadet.”

El Chulo contacted him in order to get help turning himself over to authorities, and requested assistance from an NGO, someone from the State Attorney’s Office, and another from the public defender’s office. In exchange for turning himself in, he would provide a video and documents that confirmed his story. He said that the murder was ordered by Colonel Edgar Plazas, whom they called Don Diego and who was paying back a favor for Castaño.

Plazas, according to El Chulo’s statement, was pleased with the paramilitary because they had helped him get the guerrillas out of Gabarra, in the Northern Santander Province.

“For turning himself in, El Chulo told us that Mr. Rodrigo Dalek, former bodyguard of retired General Harold Bedoya, would contact us which, in effect, they did but El Chulo did not turn himself in despite of all the efforts made because the Attorney General’s Office made many mistakes”. This journalist at no point gave an official statement for the record because he did not believe the Attorney General would conduct Garzón’s investigation properly, the source stated.

Currently, Colonel Edgar Plazas is in jail for the death of industrialist Benjamín Koudari and is being investigated for the alleged sale of weapons to the FARC by the military. El Chulo was captured in Bolívar City for other crimes and has never been charged.

However, information leading to the possible involvement of the military does not stop there. Another informant said that under orders from a soldier with the last name Correa Copolla, he followed a possible suspect in Jaime Garzón’s murder in Huila. During the operative, he was wounded and once brought to the Military Hospital, he asked to speak with the district attorney to confess that the military was linked to Garzon’s crime.

At the time, soldier Correa Copolla was in the town of Pitalito, Huila. The soldier stated to the Attorney General’s Office that he had ordered the operative by having the informant make an anonymous phone call, but stated that he had nothing to do with the Garzón homicide. Oddly enough, a weapon was seized during the operative but it later was disclaimed.

Nonetheless, the district attorney that had investigated the case, Eduardo Mesa, said that all the hypotheses that pointed towards the military were thrown out as a result of stronger evidence pointing towards other parties. “The hypotheses that pointed towards the military did not have any substance. They were all circumstantial,” Mesa said, while he added that the evidence against Castaño did have credibility.

The supporting evidence, according to investigators, consisted of the following:

Senator Piedad Córdoba, who was kidnapped by the paramilitary, once freed said that Castaño had ordered Garzón a military target.

Gloria Cecilia Hernández, life-long companion of Garzón stated that Garzón looked for a contact in a Bogotá prison in order to speak with Castaño and that a recently murdered paramilitary member, Angel Gaitán Mahecha, helped him by giving him a cellular or mobile phone to talk to Castaño.

In an alleged conversation, Castaño had insulted Garzón accusing him of helping the guerrillas, but had accepted a meeting with him on Saturday, August 14, for which Garzón rented an airplane that would bring him to the town of Montería. Garzón was killed the next day.

Garzón told all his friends and colleagues that Castaño had threatened to kill him.

During the first week of December 2000, after an argument with Castaño, six members of the Terraza gang confessed to being perpetrators of several crimes ordered by Castaño against human rights activists, among them Garzón.

According to the testimony of one of the members of the Terraza gang, Castaño ordered him to kill on the grounds that the military was investigating Garzón for having alleged connections to the guerrillas and that he was involved in several kidnappings for profit. Castaño had offered them control of a drug trafficking route as well as 39 million pesos. They also suggested that owing to the fact that since Garzón was trying to reach Castaño, they did not have time to receive an order to stop the hit because they did not have a telephone.

Attorneys, however, state that this evidence is difficult to prove since, first of all, Gaitán Mahecha denied to the district attorney that Garzón, during his visit to the prison, had spoken via telephone to Castaño. Instead he claimed that Garzón, with the object of writing a book, went to the prison to interview drug trafficker John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, a.k.a. Popeye, who was responsible for the kidnapping of Andrés Pastrana for the Medellín Cartel in 1988.

Velásquez Vásquez confirmed Mahecha’s statement. He also stated that Garzón had mentioned the need to contact the head of the paramilitary of Yacopí in the Province of Antioquia, a.k.a. El Aguilar, in order to resolve some problems that he had with Castaño. The prison’s visitor’s log confirms Garzón’s entry into the prison.

Therefore, no one is certain whether or not Garzón spoke to Castaño. Mesa explained, however, that Gaitán Mahecha and Popeye could deny the telephone conversation so that they are not linked to Castaño.

The Attorney General’s Office is certain that there is plenty of testimonial, technical, and legal evidence, as well as photographic evidence, linking Juan Pablo Ortiz, a.k.a. Bochas, currently being tried for criminal intent, as the person responsible for the homicide.

The Attorney General’s Office offers the following evidence:

Bochas, in effect, was proven to be a member of the Terraza gang, commissioned by Castaño. The Terraza gang is a network of hit men from Medellín that, according to some estimates from authorities, have been responsible for nearly 3,000 murders.

In order to link Bochas, an important element was the collaboration of the witness, María Amparo Arroyabe Mantilla, who provided information the same day of the crime, helped describe the murder and on October 19, 1999, took part in a line up for authorities.

Two other witnesses, Wilson Ramírez (a DAS informant) and Maribel Jiménez Montoya confessed to the State Attorney’s Office in Medellín that Bochas and another young man, named Toño, had coerced them into hiding and then handing back both a gun and a pistol, and spoke of a trip to Bogotá. Ramírez was certain that the two guys were working for an ex-member of the Terraza gang, linked to the murders of the human rights investigators from CINEP, Elsa Alvarado and Mario Calderón.

Maribel Jiménez confirmed that on August 10, Bochas and Toño claimed their hidden weapons from her. Then on the 12th, Bochas and Toño, wearing clothing more suited for cold weather, were picked up on a motorcycle (one day before Garzón’s murder) and made references to a job that had to be performed in Bogotá. She also said that on August 14 or 15 they were back at home, counting a large sum of money, and made a reference to the “gap-toothed” which was a blatant characteristic of the shoe shiner character Garzón portrayed.

As in Castaño’s case, evidence against Bochas as perpetrator also presents difficulties in proving, according to Alirio Uribe, attorney from Attorney’s Cooperative. Uribe stated that the fact that Bochas worked for the Terraza gang did not mean Castaño commissioned him, especially considering several members of the gang confessed on a television program in Medellín that they also did dirty work for the military, police, and mafia.

The alleged perpetrator’s attorney, Luz Dary Charry, told the IAPA that they are basing Bochas’s defense on “the fact that on the day of the murder, according to statements made by people in a parking lot, he was in Medellín and not in Bogotá”. Another element that came into question was the fact the witness, forty five year-old Amparo Arroyabe, who claimed she saw Bochas shoot, was considered unreliable because of both her age and the distance from the 15th floor where she was located, could not accurately describe the face or specifics of the crime. Lastly, because statements made by another person, Maribel Jiménez Montoya, are false, since what she really wanted by accusing Bochas was to get him out of the neighborhood in which they both lived in order to set up an urban militia unit of the FARC that Bochas did not get along with.

The district attorney’s office, however, agreed with the results of their theory and explained that four days after the murder, a professor from the Province of Sucre, who regularly taught classes on three Colombian islands in the Caribbean (San Bernardo del Viento, La Múcura, and Islote), saw Bochas talking on his cellular phone from Islote with someone and heard him say, “I am here relaxing after shutting up the joker. Let’s talk in a few days from now in front of the Tequendama (hotel in Bogotá) about other jobs.”

The professor made his statement to the police. And, in January 2000, when the news programs showed Bochas on the television, the teacher identified him to authorities and remembered that he had also seen him in September 1999 playing water sports in Múcura with seven other young men. A committee of the Human Rights Unit traveled to the island and found a building with millions of dollars of property from Medellín drug traffickers. According to the prosecutor, this established a mafia link between the paramilitary leader and the hit men from the Terraza gang.

On January 11, 2000, they ordered the start of the hearing on Ortiz Agudelo’s (Bochas’s) statement. Seven days later they took him into custody as the person who committed the crime. Bochas is being held without bail by the State Attorney’s office in Medellín during the trial against members of the gang from the San Javier El Socorro neighborhood that thrives on the hierarchy of the Terraza gang.

On April 24, 2000, they found Castaño, and on June 29, 2000 he was taken into protective custody for having ordered the murder.

On September 27, 2001, the Attorney General’s Office captured Edilberto Antonio Sierra, a.k.a. Toño, who was driving the motorcycle when Bochas shot at Garzón.

Therefore, the investigation is soon to be concluded and the accused will go before a judge. However, it is the civil attorney’s fear that the perpetrators of this crime may go unpunished if Bochas, Toño, and Castaño are not the true guilty parties or at least are not the only ones involved.

On August 11, 2001, civil attorneys filed charges against the State on three grounds. First, the fact that Colombian authorities, especially the President of the Republic and the Government of Cundinamarca, had put Garzón in a risky situation allowing him to negotiate the release of kidnapped hostages. Second, because the State, knowing the danger in which he found himself, did not provide the necessary security that he required and third, because of the involvement of the members of the Armed Forces in the murder.

The Colombian Commission of Jurists is preparing a formal complaint to bring before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights so that the District Attorney may investigate other aspects of this case that could determine whether or not the military was involved in Garzón’s homicide.