Ten years later, these are the only ones convicted in the case of Luis Andrés Colmenares

In Colombia there are dozens of judicial processes with media tinge, but few compare to that of the mysterious death of Luis Andrés Colmenares, a young student from the Universidad de los Andes who was found dead in a pipe located in the Virrey Park in Bogotá.

Very close to where Colmenares’s body was found dead, there was the bar where on the night of October 31, 2010, I was chatting with several college classmates, including his girlfriend Laura Moreno and his friend Jessy Quintero.

Grass: They confirm the death of Horacio Serpa Uribe, former minister, former presidential candidate and liberal political leader

An event that continues to generate debate in the country as to whether the 20-year-old died by accident or whether it was a homicide. Although the Colombian justice acquitted Moreno and Quintero accused of covering up the alleged murderSince Carlos Cárdenas was the determiner of the crime, this judicial process left several convicts, witnesses who with lies tried to deceive justice.

Is about Wílmer Ayola, Jonathan Martínez and Jesús Alberto Martínez, the three barely started the process to find out the causes of death of Colmenares posed as star witnesses who assured a judge that they saw several young people, including Carlos Cárdenas, hit Luis Andrés in the Virrey Park on the night of October 31, 2010.

This was told by Ayola in an interview with La W on June 21, 2012:

I saw Miss Laura Moreno with Mr. Carlos Cárdenas, they were giving Luis Andrés Colmenares a beating. I was with a friend who sold alcohol, he received a call to take an address and we walked to the park, to the green area. We saw a parked van. There were five people, they were arguing among themselves.

The three witnesses brought the same theory to the courts: Luis Andrés Colmenares was attacked at close range, which caused his death. They even detailed how allegedly Carlos Cárdenas (Laura Moreno’s ex-boyfriend) hit Colmenares on the head with a glass bottle. One of the hypotheses that the Prosecutor’s Office presented to prosecute the three young university students.

However, the same In 2013, the Attorney General’s Office dismissed these witnesses from the case and filed an accusation against them for the crimes of false testimony, procedural fraud and subsidy fraud. (the one who has obtained aid or subsidy from public resources by deception), the three men systematically lied.

Grass: This is how Laura Moreno, Jessy Quintero and Carlos Cárdenas live today after 10 years after the death of Luis Andrés Colmenares

In 2014 Jesús Alberto Martínez accepted the charges and was sentenced to 7 years in prison, but was murdered in La Picota on August 16, 2018 while serving his sentence.

On the other hand, José Wilmer Ayola was sentenced to 8 years of home detention and Jonathan Martínez to 6 years and 9 months in prison for the crimes of procedural fraud, false testimony and grant fraud.

Who brought the false witnesses to the Colmenares case?

Once it was known that the star witnesses in the Colmenares case were false, the question that arose was, who asked them to testify with lies?

Ayola confessed that there was a plot and many people working to have Carlos Cárdenas convicted: “Many paid for this, friends of Dr. González (former prosecutor in the case) and friends of the Colmenares family. Each witness had a salary “.

The former prosecutor Antonio Luis González who took the case in its early years and was the one who presented these witnesses to put together his theory of the murder of Luis Andrés Colmenares.

In 2014 Napoleón Botache Díaz, former prosecutor in support of the prosecutor González, explained the origin of the false witnesses in this process. In his statements, Botache spoke as a witness and told the 27th criminal circuit judge with knowledge functions, that the prosecutor in the case had a fixation on the Colmenares process, so he assured that there was an inexplicable need to find culprits.

This October 31 marks 10 years since Luis Andrés Colmenares passed away, a tragedy that from all sides is painful and that is why his family will continue to demand justice as they assure that the 20-year-old was murdered.