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El Espectador learned of the 24 reports from Legal Medicine, as well as details of the investigations that seek to clarify what happened on the night of March 21 in this prison. The Attorney General’s Office could misrepresent the first observations made by the Attorney General’s Office at the time.
This week the Prosecutor’s Office was putting the accelerator on to finish a report that will be the key piece to call for a disciplinary trial those who could be responsible for the 24 deaths left by a riot at the La Modelo prison in Bogotá in March of this year. But the NGO Human Rights Watch was ahead of them with a strong complaint: According to independent forensic experts who analyzed the autopsies of these two dozen people, at least 14 of the deaths can be classified as intentional homicides. El Espectador had access to the Legal Medicine reports and new details of the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Ministry.
(In context: “Deaths of detainees at La Modelo would have been intentional,” Human Rights Watch)
In events that are yet to be clarified, but which are unprecedented in the country, on March 21, when Colombia began a strict quarantine for COVID-19, in several prisons in the country inmates began to protest. In the midst of overcrowding exceeding 50% and a constant human rights crisis, inmates banged on their cell bars, shouted harangues, and lit their mattresses. In La Modelo, the second largest prison in Bogotá, the situation got out of control: videos show inmates with weapons supplied by the Penitentiary Institute (Inpec) and only until three in the morning was order restored with a balance in that moment of 23 dead and 90 wounded.
As counted The viewer At that time, one of the wounded inmates later died in the medical center where he was being treated, bringing the death toll to 24. The Minister of Justice at the time, Margarita Cabello, now an elected attorney, said very Early on March 22, it was all about a “criminal escape plan”, while the Prosecutor’s Office carried out the removal of the bodies and took the first statements. At the entrance to the jail, relatives of some of the more than 4,900 inmates crowded together asking for information just when the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, imposed a mock confinement and the new coronavirus began to collect its first deaths in the country.
(Also read: The failed riot of the Modelo prison that ended in massacre)
The Prosecutor’s Office assumed the disciplinary investigation, but when its investigators arrived, the Prosecutor’s Office had already removed the bodies and the floor of the prison had already been washed, according to sources close to the process. Weeks later, the attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, said: “It has been known that behind these events (the disorders in the prisons) are related leaders of the armed groups of the Eln and dissidents of the Farc.” And he pointed directly to the dissident of the Farc Henry Castellanos Garzón, alias Romagna, who is part of the group La Segunda Marquetalia, along with Ivan Marquez, Jesus Santrich and other former FARC chiefs.
However, The viewer he learned that the investigations that the Attorney General’s Office has carried out so far could totally distort the alleged intervention of guerrillas or dissidents. For this case, the Human Rights Directorate of the Prosecutor’s Office had a team of two prosecutors and two investigators, who have compiled the testimonies of all the injured, analyzed all the videos of the prison’s security cameras and it was learned that they were at a very sensitive stage of the case, about to make substantive decisions. This newspaper sent several questions to the investigating body, but it indicated that it cannot refer to the process for now.
(Read also: You may be interested: State Council says “enough already” to disproportionate penalties for women)
What do autopsies show?
El Espectador reviewed the 24 autopsies, in which 19 of the deaths are classified as “violent-homicide” and the other five as violent “in context to be determined.” Only in three of them did it stand out that they were deaths in state custody, a serious element, since experts from the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims and the Independent Forensic Expert Group, who evaluated the autopsies for Human Rights Watch, were concerned about that Legal Medicine had not applied in this investigation the Minnesota protocol, an international mandate that details how investigations for extrajudicial executions should be carried out.
In 12 of the reports, the experts specified that there was no gunshot residue on the body. If found, they would have been an indication that the weapon was fired a short distance from the victims. In the rest of the reports there is no reference to whether or not there were traces of the shots. Only in the autopsy of one of the victims, Henry Humberto Gómez Méndez, 46, convicted of femicide and who died as a result of a shot in the lower back of the skull, it is said that there was a “confrontation with guard and death”. However, in the examination of his body, the forensic doctor clarified that no powder residue was found.
In the case, for example, of Euclides José Pérez, 29, Legal Medicine wrote that “he has no injuries compatible with patterns of fighting, holding or defending.” That is to say, he did not fight. While in the autopsies of Diego Fernando Rodríguez Peña, 25 years old and accused of murder, more blows were found on one of the legs, as well as “signs on the abdomen and back that he was dragged.” And in that of Diego Andrés Rodríguez Fuentes, 23, it was found that he had blows to the torso. This newspaper learned that the latter, held in the north wing of La Modelo for a minor crime, had no problems with the people in his yard.
(Also read: The Inpec bus that spread COVID-19 to three prisons in the country)
According to several inmates, after the protest escalated violently, fights were seen between inmates from different patios who had fights married from before. At one point, a group of detainees began shouting “freedom, freedom!” And said they were going to escape. By that time, similar riots had already occurred in prisons in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, and other countries. All trying to escape the new coronavirus. At one point in the night, videos of hundreds of their companions walking on rooftops began to circulate on the cell phones of La Modelo inmates. “It seemed that they were going to escape,” an inmate told this newspaper.
That image motivated, for example, Campo Elías Carranza Sanabria to try to flee. The 36-year-old was loved by his patio companions, had no problems with dragoneers, and redeemed part of his grief by working with wooden crafts. But he had a conviction on him for extortionate kidnapping that would keep him in prison for many years, no matter how hard he worked. It is said that his last words were: “I fly from here or have myself killed.” In La Modelo there is a rumor that, amid the chaos, it was one of the inmates who managed to get hold of a firearm. He died from a bullet in the chest.
Legal Medicine also details in the autopsies that several inmates died without receiving any medical assistance. There are the cases, for example, of Cirus David Rojas Ospina, 24, who died for not having controlled the loss of blood caused by two bullets, one in the pelvis and the other in the abdomen, and “has no trace of treatment doctor”. That of Jhon Fredy Peña Jiménez, 32, whose leg was fractured by a bullet in his leg and his autopsy reads: “No signs of medical attention.” And that of Andrés Felipe Melo Sánchez, 26, who bled to death from a shot in the arm and with his shirt tied in the wound in an attempt to stop the blood.
Although Legal Medicine does not clarify in this last autopsy if there are indications or not that Melo Sánchez has received medical assistance, what inmates and guards of La Modelo have is that only around 2 in the morning the Inpec was able to regain control over the prison . “The jail belonged to the prisoners,” said an inmate. Between them they were helping the wounded and putting the bodies in the center of each patio, according to people who were there. In some patios, Inpec officials would have moved the bodies.
Senator Iván Cepeda and the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners reported these events to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) since last March and have been accompanying some affected. The senator del Polo told this newspaper that the IACHR has already asked the Colombian State for information on the case, and that, although from the beginning they have been denouncing that what happened in the La Modelo prison could go unpunished, the autopsies now show that , “There was every intention of educating the inmates at the beginning of the pandemic to stop any attempt to protest in the future. And they succeeded ”.
The Attorney General’s Office is close to making decisions on the case and in a few days a report is expected to reach Fernando Carrillo’s office that will summarize all the events of the night of March 21 at La Modelo. Human Rights Watch expressed its concern that, starting next January, the person who will take the reins of that entity is Margarita Cabello, precisely who, during the riot, was the highest authority of Inpec as Minister of Justice. However, due to the proper functioning of the Public Ministry, the case would not have to reach their hands and this newspaper learned that in the connection between Carrillo and Cabello, no specific case was mentioned, not even this one that directly touches her.
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