U.S intelligence agents in Colombia produced a report which signals ex Colonel Alfonso Plazas Vega as the mastermind behind the disappearances and killings of civilians rescued during the 1985 Palace of Justice siege.
According to newspaper El Espectador, the document was made known to Colombian authorities in 1998 but was not made public until 2008 and identified Plazas Vega as the commander of the Palace ‘recapture’ operation as well as coordinating the rescue and fate of the civilians trapped in the building when the Army stormed it.
The U.S investigation determined that Plazas Vega acted unlawfully considering the suspicious nature of the deaths of some of the members of the guerrilla gang, M-19, who took 300 hostages at the Palace of Justice in Bogota on November 6 1985.
Allegedly, at the time of the siege, there was a sytematic removal operation which was ‘disappearing’ people and which involved many members of Colombia’s army and police force.
The U.S investigation named Plazas Vega as involved in this operation and signaled him as responsible for the disappearances and killings of 11 civilians after they were rescued from the Palace.
The prosecution in the ongoing case against Plazas Vega requests that the content of the U.S report be used as evidence that illegal activity on the part of the Colombian Armed Forces took place during and after the Palace of Justice siege.