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In recent days, new information has been released about the death of Mario Paciolla, the 33-year-old Italian found dead in Colombia on July 15 while working as a UN aid worker. Several investigations have been opened about his case, including one internal to the UN, one carried out by the Colombian authorities and another by the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, but the news comes mainly from journalists who have explored the less clear aspects of the matter. The initial suspicion that Paciolla did not commit suicide, as the first hypothesis of the Colombian authorities maintains, is finding more and more confirmation from journalists and observers. “They killed him,” they said five days ago Republic her parents based on some elements that have emerged in recent weeks.
Paciolla was 33 years old and was part of a United Nations mission that supervised the implementation of the peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government, which was signed in 2016. In recent years, the implementation of the The agreement was difficult because organized crime, FARC dissidents and some far-right paramilitary groups are still in conflict with each other over control of the territory. Paciolla had been in Colombia since 2018 and lived in San Vicente del Caguán, a city in the Caquetá department that has long been chosen as a strategic center by guerrillas and traffickers. On July 15, he was found dead by a colleague who had searched his home for him because he could not communicate with him.
The first unclear aspect of Paciolla’s death concerns the days immediately preceding. “My son was terrified: in the last six days he did nothing but show his concern and concern for something he had seen, understood, intuited,” his mother, Anna Motta, told Republic July 16. «I only know that since Friday the 10th of last week, my son was in a state of great suffering […] He called me and told me that he had run away with some of his bosses, that he had spoken clearly and that, he told me, he had “gotten into trouble.”
A recent investigation published in the Colombian newspaper The viewer from journalist Claudia Julieta Duque, who knew Paciolla personally, added some details about Paciolla’s alleged fears. Duque says that Paciolla began to worry in November 2019, while he was in Italy on vacation: in those days he asked the online magazines that hosted his poems to delete them, he made his Facebook account private, also deleting all the photos, and deleted all tweets from his Twitter account. Paciolla also asked a friend to copy all the data onto her computer.
Back in Colombia, Duque continues, between November 19 and 21 Paciolla told several people that he and some of his colleagues in San Vicente del Caguán had suffered unspecified “cyber attacks.” Duque connects the concern shown by Paciolla in those days with a political scandal that took place in Colombia in early November.
On November 7, the then Colombian Minister of Justice, Guillermo Botero, resigned after two days earlier an opposition senator, Roy Barreras, released the contents of a UN report on an attack by the Colombian army on a center. command of some FARC dissidents. The very detailed report listed acts of violence committed against both dissidents and their families, and estimated that seven minors between the ages of 12 and 17 were among those killed in the attack. Among others, Paciolla had also worked on the report, whose name and other information appeared explicitly in the document, which should have been kept confidential.
It is not clear who gave the report to Barreras and what reasons he had: Duque cites the name of a military officer involved in other similar cases, but without providing further evidence. In his article, however, he relates that after Botero’s resignation, some people from the UN mission in San Vicente del Caguán began to worry about possible reprisals from the Colombian army, embarrassed by the revelations of Barreras and Botero’s resignation. .
It is in this context, writes Duque, that Paciolla began to confide in friends and acquaintances that he was concerned. After the interventions in his social accounts he told some people that he felt “betrayed” and “used”, and in January he asked to be transferred, without success. On July 11, four days before he died, he told his family that he wanted to return before his assignment ended, which would end at the end of August, and he wrote to a friend that he wanted to forget Colombia and everything that had happened. July 14 writes Republic, «He asked and got [dalla famiglia] the details of a credit card to buy the plane ticket that would take him home. Mario had already packed the suitcase. Inside were some gifts for friends and family that I would give them once they returned to Naples. On July 15, he was found dead in his apartment in a location that suggested suicide.
Republic he writes that the first to see Paciolla’s body was Christian Thompson, the security officer for the UN mission in San Vicente del Caguán, with whom Paciolla “had chatted until ten o’clock the night before.” The police officers present at the scene tell a Republic some peculiarities of Thompson’s behavior.
Thompson says that the computers and cell phones belonged to the UN and therefore could not be taken away. And while police say he was told not to touch anything, he is taking some crucial items from the crime scene for the next several days. Which, it will say later, have been disposed of in landfills and are therefore no longer available. On July 17, Thompson always returns to Mario’s house with two women who clean the entire house with bleach and return the keys to the owner. The next day the police arrive to carry out an inspection. But now there was nothing left.
Duque also suspects that the UN mission is somehow involved in the death of Paciolla, who in an article prior to his investigation published by The viewer and translated from Manifest He said that in addition to having cleaned Paciolla’s apartment, in the days after his death, UN officials had his own doctor attend the autopsy, suggesting that his presence had been requested by the Italian embassy in Colombia. and prevented Paciolla’s colleagues from speaking to the press. Soon after, the San Vicente del Caguán office was closed for security reasons. On July 24, the UN sent an inventory of Paciolla’s personal belongings collected from his apartment to Rome, explaining that they were still in Colombia by order of the local prosecutor’s office: the family has not yet received them.
In his research by The viewer, Duque added one more detail: in the inventory sent by the UN to Paciolla’s family, there was also his computer mouse, which according to information from the prosecutor’s office obtained by Duque was found covered in blood. Duque, however, discovered that the mouse was cleaned and is now at the headquarters of the UN mission in Colombia in Bogotá, along with other “stolen” items from the Paciolla department.
A few days ago the prosecutor in Rome had made it known that they had changed the name of the investigation for the death of Paciolla, which now refers to a murder. According to information published by Italian newspapers, a first autopsy carried out on Paciolla’s body would have revealed that the death did not occur for the reason cited by the Colombian authorities, namely asphyxia: the news, however, has not yet been officially confirmed. Also according to the newspapers, it will take a few more months to obtain the results of the other reports commissioned, including the toxicological examination.
Where to ask for help
If you are in an emergency situation, call 112. If you or someone you know has suicidal thoughts, you can call the Helpline at 199 284 284 or online from here, every day from 10 to 24.
You can also call me Samaritans toll free 800 86 00 22 from landline or to 06 77208977 from your mobile, every day from 1pm to 10pm.
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