A former director of Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS is being taken to trial for the second time for his alleged role in a political assassination, local media reported Wednesday.
A Supreme Court prosecutor handed down a second indictment to retired general and former DAS Director Miguel Alfredo Maza Marquez for his alleged role in the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento in 1989.
According to newspaper El Tiempo, Juan Manuel Galan, senator and son of the late Galan Sarmiento said, “We are going to trial. I just found out that the Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed the indictment, for the second time against Maza Marquez.”
Mara Marquez is currently in custody, having been once again being charged with crimes against humanity, a charge which was appealed but upheld.
In November 2010, in relation to the same crime, Maza Marquez was charged with being a co-conspirator of aggravated homicide for purposes of terrorism and of attempted homicide for purposes of terrorism, W Radio reported.
The events being investigated occurred August 18, 1989 in the central square of Soacha, a town near the Colombian capital, where Galan Sarmiento was assassinated along with his body guard Santiago Cuervo Jimenez and a Soacha councilor Julio Cesar Peñalosa Sanchez. At the time Galan was the most threatened man in Colombia and the favorite to win the presidential election.
DAS was the body in charge of protecting the political leader. Former members of paramilitary groups from the Magdalena Medio region, who were ordered by the cartel to commit the assassination, have accused Maza Marquez of facilitating the crime and hampering the investigation.