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The only one convicted of the assassination of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado insists on his innocence and hopes that the testimony that the former leaders of the FARC will give in the JEP will serve to finally clear his name. Thus he has lived with a sentence of 40 years in tow.
Héctor Paúl Flórez’s hope to prove his innocence is more alive than ever. He and his lawyer are waiting for Congressmen Julián Gallo and Rodrigo Londoño, former FARC commanders, to attend the JEP Recognition Room on December 10 and 11 and tell the truth about the assassination of Álvaro Gómez Hurtado. . The defender of Flórez, convinced that the process against his client was rigged and that crucial errors were made, seeks to obtain in these testimonies a new opportunity to debate the innocence of the only one convicted of this crime. In dialogue with El Espectador, Flórez spoke about how he has lived with a 40-year sentence on his back.
He was talking to his father when he heard the news. His father, a paisa from Medellín, with a conservative disposition, had instilled that political tendency in him and they both agreed that Álvaro Gómez Hurtado was the man who could change the country. That’s why, when they found out about the murder of the political leader, his father told him: “Mijo, this is going to get worse.” Those words were prophetic. After 18 days, a search block knocked on his door: they were looking for him. “It is a routine thing and we will return it,” they told him, but he ended up in Bogotá sentenced to 40 years in prison for a crime that, he insists, he did not commit.
Héctor Paúl Flórez is the only person sentenced for the assassination of Gómez Hurtado in the 25 years that have elapsed since it was committed, on November 2, 1995, when the political leader was leaving the Sergio Arboleda University in Bogotá. Although at first it seemed that the Prosecutor’s Office, in record time, had found the perpetrator of the crime, over the years the hypothesis of the investigating body has been disqualified, even by the same family of Gómez Hurtado. If the recent confession of the former commanders of the former FARC is added, in which they attributed the crime, the procedural action leaves, to say the least, many doubts. (Also read: The dossier of the only conviction for the crime of Gómez Hurtado)
The truth is that, throughout these years, Flórez has spent 18 and a half years in prison, more than seven on probation and he still has a decade to go to pay his debt to justice. He always claimed to be innocent and the victim of a judicial setup that ended up taking away much more than his freedom. He is a native of Sincelejo (Sucre), where he lived with his parents at the time of the events. He was a high school graduate, had just completed military service and was working as an escort for a rancher in the region. According to his version, on November 2, 1995, at around 10:00 am, he was at the funeral of Purificación Tovar, the grandmother of Samir Jesús Tovar, a friend of his who was also captured for the same crime and later acquitted.
Luck, on the other hand, did not accompany Flórez, who continued at the mercy of the authorities because, although his neighbors in Sincelejo claimed to have seen him that day, the versions did not coincide with respect to the specific place where they said they had seen him. According to Flórez, there was a simple explanation: he assured that he was making a tour of the streets during the funeral. But the Prosecutor’s Office decided not to give credit to the witnesses and argued that they had been bought by Flórez’s father, who opened an investigation that was unsuccessful. Those who did have total credibility were Carlos Alberto Lugo, star witness, and José Vélez.
The first, who turned out to be an informant for the Police, said that after the crime, Flórez himself looked for him in Sincelejo and confessed that he had participated in it. The second claimed to have seen him that day at the scene; years later it was discovered that this last witness presented himself with false documentation. Supported by these two testimonies, the Prosecutor’s Office requested the arrest of Flórez and, in the blink of an eye, he says, he became the murderer of one of the most influential politicians in the country. “When I went to jail my life changed, that is going to hell. At La Modelo they extorted me because they said I had money and everyone wanted their share, ”he said.
His father, convinced of his innocence, mortgaged the house to pay for lawyers and extortion accompanied by death threats. Meanwhile, her mother’s health was deteriorating from anguish. When the resources ran out, he told his executioners that he had nothing else to do and that, if they wanted, they would kill him, but other inmates took him in and he found protection. Then he began to clean inside the prison so that he could at least sleep in a cell, because in prison “everything is payment.” He was syndicated for nine years until his sentence was handed down, five more years held in La Modelo and another four in six different prisons. He assures that every time he asked the Prosecutor’s Office for a review of the file, they transferred it. (You may be interested in: (Analysis) The murder of Álvaro Gómez: let everyone tell the truth)
It was the year 2000 when the Prosecutor’s Office took him to a trial that lasted until December 22, 2002. That day he was notified of his conviction. “I thought: ‘They made me pay for what I didn’t eat.’ The world collapsed, I felt that I had finished, that everything was hard, that everything was against it, “he said. That same year he had married, while he was detained at La Modelo. “La Cecilia” had been his girlfriend when he was young, they studied together at school and lived in the same neighborhood. “She told me: ‘How many years are you going to be…’. I replied that if he wanted, we would separate, because it is very hard to be with someone who has such a sentence. But he said, ‘I’m going to be with you,’ I’m going to support you. ‘
So it was. Despite the circumstances, she remained by their side for 16 years and they had a daughter. But the weight of condemnation and social stigma fell on them. Although they are still married, they are no longer together and what remains is a good friendship. “She was an incentive, the strength, the energy that I needed. Losing her was very hard, she was my support and my engine. The cost of being in prison was very high, my family, ”says Flórez. Despite the difficulties, he was able to take advantage of his time in jail and even received discounts on his sentence for good behavior and studies. He graduated as a technologist in hospitality and tourism, and trained in fine arts.
She says that for 12 years she took different courses on human rights, which helped her study her case in detail and decide to send a letter to Enrique Gómez Martínez, Álvaro Gómez Hurtado’s nephew and family lawyer. “I broke the process down to him, showed him the irregularities and explained that he was innocent. He went to visit me in the Palogordo prison, in Girón (Santander), and he told me that he knew he had nothing to do with the death of his uncle, that he was going to help me. It was as if an angel appeared to me ”. In effect, Gómez Martínez presented a request to the Supreme Court in 2018 for the case to be reviewed, but the high court rejected the appeal claiming that the debate had already taken place. (Related article: The hypotheses that were considered in the Prosecutor’s Office on the Álvaro Gómez Hurtado case)
On July 24, 2014, Flórez was released on parole, but it was only until nine months ago that he found work in Corabastos, when the owners of some supermarkets gave him the opportunity he was looking for. “It is a very dignified job, these people believed in me and I feel very proud to do what I do,” he says. Now his judicial process is in the hands of the lawyer José Manuel Díaz Soto, a member of the Inocencia Project, a program of the Manuela Beltrán University that is dedicated to representing those who have been unjustly convicted. The jurist assured that the priority is to seek the acquittal of Flórez and that, in the future, filing legal actions against the State is not ruled out.
