Protesters who had been mobilized by President Gustavo Petro blocked entrances of Colombia’s Palace of Justice to demand a new chief prosecutor.
The unrest in the capital broke out after the high court announced that it had again failed to pick a successor of outgoing Prosecutor General Francisco Barbosa.
As a consequence of this failure, deputy Prosecutor General Martha Mancera will take over the prosecution on Monday despite evidence she protects alleged drug traffickers.
In an attempt to pressure the court into preventing Mancera’s take-over, some 20,000 people took to the streets in Bogota.
A few dozen of these protesters proceeded to block to entrance to the palace of justice’s parking garage after the court announced that it would continue voting for a new chief prosecutor in two weeks.
Supreme Court president Gerson Chaverra condemned the “siege.”
Supreme Court president Gerson Chaverra
Multiple judicial experts and news media had called on the court to elect a new chief prosecutor before Monday’s deadline.
Chaverra, however, insisted that the court would decide how much time was needed to pick Barbosa’s successor from a shortlist that had been presented by the president.
Also on Thursday, the Supreme Court president said that the court would not budge to “pressures, attacks or threats.”
The violence in Bogota followed months of escalating tensions between the Petro administration and Barbosa, a college buddy of former President Ivan Duque.
The president accused the prosecution earlier this week of illegally investigating him after a raid on a labor union that had contributed funds to Petro’s leftist party, Colombia Humana.