The role of Pablo Escobar in the taking of the Palace of Justice, according to Popeye

Jhon Jairo Velásquez, better known as Popeye, was the closest hit man to the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar and before he died He told the role of the narco in the taking of the Palace of Justice.

In 1985, with the empire of the Medellín Cartel reaching its peak in the face of the power and violence it exerted on the Colombian territory, Escobar triggered a war against the government of Belisario Betancur and the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States.

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More than three decades after the seizure of the Palace of Justice by the M-19 guerrilla, and the resumption that the National Army carried out hours later, Popeye revealed that his “boss” did finance the guerrilla group to carry out the act terrorist.

In an interview for Semana Magazine, the criminal revealed: “The financing by Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria and the Medellín cartel to take over the Palace of Justice is a reality; note that I do not say supposedly “.

Popeye, who paid a sentence of 23 years in prison, was recaptured in 2018 and died in prison, said in his version that Escobar gave weapons and two million dollars to Iván Marino Ospina, military chief of the M-19, supplies that were crucial to carry out the plan that had been rolling out months in advance.

“The boss told them not to get into the Palace, but into the Senate, because President Belisario Betancur was going to fight for the Senate,” and already in a supposed negotiation, the first thing the guerrilla commanders had to ask was that the Government renounce the extradition of Colombians to the United States, which was the struggle of the Medellín cartel. “Plan ‘B’ was to kill the largest number of magistrates and burn the files, which was the one that was carried out because they had advanced work in the Court, they had it infiltrated”he told Semana.

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Popeye also said that the drug lord saw a golden opportunity when the M-19 told him about the operation they were planning.

He hated Belisario Betancur, because he had given him $ 5 million for the campaign, and when he was there he appointed Rodrigo Lara Bonilla as Minister of Justice, which was one of the pacts they had. When Pablo kills Lara Bonilla, Belisario becomes the great enemy.

This version was also supported by the Truth Commission, which in 2009 detailed that Escobar “gave two million dollars” to Iván Marino Ospina, then head of the April 19 Movement (M-19), and members of that guerrilla group received weapons to carry out the takeover.

The text stated that the Colombian State had to accept its responsibility for “an excess of public force” after the guerrilla assault on the Palace of Justice. More than a hundred people died in the event.

“Really, It is indisputable that there was an excess of public force in the recovery (of the Palace), ”declared Magistrate Nilson Pinilla, one of the three members of the investigative committee of that commission.

Version denied by ex-M-19 guerrillas

In 2020, before the Truth Commission, demobilized from the M-19 recognized that it was a wrong decision to take the Palace of Justice to “pressure the government of Belisario Betancur to negotiate peace.” But they denied any relationship between the former guerrilla and the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

José Otty Patiño, who was one of the top leaders of the subversive group, said that he is “Absolutely convinced, not only because of the assessment I have of who the M-19 commanders were, specifically Álvaro Fayad (commander at the time of the Palace of Justice), that it is impossible, morally, that this decision has been made taken by order of a drug trafficker like Pablo Escobar “.

There was a rumor that Escobar also financed the operation to take over the Palace of Justice so that the guerrillas once inside would burn the documents of the processes that the Supreme Court of Justice was carrying out against the drug traffickers.

But nevertheless, Álvaro Jiménez, who was a spokesperson for the M-19 in the peace negotiations with the Belisario Betancur government in 1984, said that this hypothesis was false.

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The case of the Palace of Justice has not advanced for more than a year in the courts, so the victims demand the truth from the defendants.

“We need a truth now, whatever the perpetrators have to tell, but now; 35 years have passed and there has been no truth or any recognition from them “, Pilar Navarrete, widow of Héctor Jaime Beltrán Fuentes and member of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, in an interview with Sputnik.