The Colombian official implicated in the 1989 murder of a presidential candidate will evoke his statute of limation rights when asking the Supreme Court to throw out his case this week, local media reported Monday.
The defense team for Miguel Maza Marquez, the former director of Colombia’s now defunct intelligence agency (DAS) who was accused of assisting in the murder of 1989 presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galan, will try to throw out the case against Marquez by reframing Galan’s death, according to El Tiempo newspaper: They will argue that Galan’s murder was not a human rights violation, as it had been previously classified, and so cannot be investigated indefinitely.
Marquez was released from a two-year prison stay in January after the Supreme Court declared his trial–and most of the decades worth of evidence accumulated against him for his alleged role Galan’s execution–invalid.
Marquez’ attorneys had successfully argued that he should have been tried by the Supreme Court, not the lower courts where his case was heard, because of his position in the DAS at the time of the crime.
The attorney general’s office seeks to reopen the case against Marquez, saying the Supreme Court’s January decision to nullify evidence did not extend to more recent statements made by various ex-paramilitary chiefs against the intelligence director.
Galan was a hugely popular presidential candidate who is thought to have been killed in a plot involving Pablo Escobar and Galan’s political opponents. His case remains one of the most high-profile political murders in Colombia’s history.
The prosecution maintains that Marquez, who as head of the DAS was responsible for Galan’s safety, allowed “serious ommissions” in the security plan for the politician, who had already received numerous death threats.
Marquez has denied charges that he helped orchestrate Galan’s murder.