M-19 guerrilla body killed during the seizure of the Palace of Justice in 1985 was handed over to his family

On the morning of Wednesday, November 6, 1985, the country would witness one of the many violent and confusing events that are part of national history. A group of members of the urban guerrilla called M-19 entered the Palace of Justice, in what is known as the 'seizure of the palace', after which the military forces commanded by the retired (convicted and released) Colonel Alfonso Acevedo arrived and staged the 'retake'. The seizure and resumption of the Palace of Justice after 27 hours ended with a danteous toll of 94 people dead and 12 missing, mostly cafeteria workers and visitors.

After 37 years, the Internal Working Group for the Search, Identification and Delivery of Disappeared Persons (GRUBE) of the Attorney General's Office carried out in Cali the remains of a member of the M-19 who died in the violent events that occurred between November 6 and 7, 1985. The skeletal remains of the one identified as Jesús Molina Pinto were handed over to his relatives in the capital of Vallecaucana.

“At a ceremony held at the Central Civil Cemetery, in the east of the capital of the Valley, Molina Pinto's sister, María Teresa Mueces Pinto, received the skeletal remains on behalf of the family by Gloria Quesada Garzón and Mónica Echeverri Bejarano, supporting prosecutors attached to the First Delegate Prosecutor's Office to the Supreme Court of Justice”, the Prosecutor's Office reported on Jesus who would have died at the age of 25.

At the House of Memories of Conflict and Reconciliation, members of the National Forensic Pathology Group of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, in a meeting with the relatives of Molina Pinta, indicated how was the process to be achieved with the identification of Jesús Molina, who they had no knowledge of his whereabouts since 1985.

The prosecutor stated in a statement issued: “The work of collecting biological samples and the morphological and genetic identification of forensic experts from the Attorney General's Office allowed Molina Pinto's remains to be exhumed from a mass grave in the Southern Cemetery in Bogotá in 1998. The work that included scientific studies and the molecular typing of genetic profiles for identification purposes”.

It may interest you: Takeover of the Palace of Justice: unpublished investigation reveals how survivors were tortured and executed in military installations

On December 10 of last year, the Truth Commission revealed unpublished details of what happened on November 6, 1985, when the M-19 guerrillas broke into Bogotá's Palace of Justice, taking state officials and members of the Colombian Supreme Court hostage. The takeover generated a response from the public forces with a counterattack that lasted two days. Almost 100 people were killed and the building was reduced to ashes.

This thorough investigation focused not so much on what happened inside the Palace of Justice between the guerrillas and the Army, but what happened to the people who left the building alive but then disappeared or were presented as victims.

The report, which includes 3D videos and minute-by-minute reconstruction of what happened that day in downtown Bogotá, reveals how cafeteria workers, students, visitors, guerrillas and magistrates who were classified as' special 'or' suspected 'were arrested, taken to different military facilities in the city, tortured, executed and, in some cases, disappeared by the Armed Forces.

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