Miami jury rejects torture and killing claims against former Colombian colonel

MIAMI — After Colombian magistrate Carlos Horacio Urán Rojas was found dead inside Bogotá’s Palace of Justice in November 1985, military officials told his family that he had been killed in the crossfire as Colombian forces retook the building from M-19 guerrillas.

Years later, evidence emerged that challenged that account. Video and eyewitness accounts indicated that Urán had left the burning building alive and injured, escorted by soldiers. In 2007, some of his personal belongings were discovered in a locked vault at a Colombian Army installation. His daughters came to believe that he had been taken into military custody, tortured and executed.

Their effort to hold someone responsible eventually brought them to U.S. District Court in Miami, where they sued retired Colombian Army Col. Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega, who participated in the operation to retake the palace and now lives in Weston.

On Thursday, after an eight-day trial, a 10-person federal jury found that Plazas Vega was not civilly liable for Urán’s torture or extrajudicial killing.

Jurors rejected the claims brought by Helena Urán Bidegain, Mairée Urán Bidegain and Xiomara Urán under both theories presented at trial: conspiracy and command responsibility.

The verdict did not decide whether Urán was tortured or extrajudicially killed after leaving the palace. The jury was asked whether Plazas Vega was individually liable for his treatment and death under the two legal theories presented by his daughters. It found that he was not.

The family said after the verdict that its effort to establish responsibility for Urán’s death would continue.

“Four decades ago, rather than bringing my father home to his family, the Colombian military tortured and killed him while operating an unlawful program of detention, torture, extrajudicial killing, and enforced disappearance,” Helena Urán said in a statement released by the Center for Justice and Accountability, which represented the family.

“To this day, no one has been held accountable for his death,” she said. “We will continue to fight for accountability for our father’s death.”

The lawsuit, filed in 2022, was the latest legal proceeding stemming from events at the Palace of Justice on Nov. 6 and 7, 1985, one of the most controversial episodes in Colombia’s recent history.

At about 11:30 a.m. on Nov. 6, roughly 35 members of the M-19 guerrilla organization attacked the palace in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolívar and took about 350 people hostage, including judges, government employees, lawyers, visitors and cafeteria workers, according to facts agreed to by both sides before the Miami trial.

Then-President Belisario Betancur ordered the Colombian Army to respond. The operation involved the Army’s 13th Brigade, commanded by Gen. Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales, and several military units, including the Cavalry School commanded by Plazas Vega, then a lieutenant colonel.

The fighting continued into the following day. Large parts of the palace were destroyed by fire and combat. Nearly 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court justices, were killed.

Urán, an auxiliary magistrate of Colombia’s Council of State, was among the dead.

His family was told by military officials that he had been killed in crossfire, according to the federal complaint. His body was found inside the palace on Nov. 7. His daughters alleged that the body had been stripped and washed and that Urán had suffered a close-range gunshot wound to the head.

The account of his death came under renewed scrutiny more than two decades later.

In 2007, during a court-ordered search connected to a criminal investigation into the disappearance of palace cafeteria workers, investigators discovered some of Urán’s personal belongings in a locked vault inside the headquarters of the Army’s 13th Brigade, according to the complaint.

Video of the military operation also showed Urán leaving the palace alive at about 2:17 p.m. on Nov. 7, according to the lawsuit. He was injured and unable to walk normally, and two soldiers supported him as he left the building. The complaint says military personnel placed him on a gurney and that video showed the gurney being carried toward the Casa del Florero, a nearby building where survivors were being taken.

In 2014, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concluded that Urán had left the palace alive in state custody and was subsequently subjected to forced disappearance and extrajudicial execution, according to the federal court record.

The Miami lawsuit sought to answer a different question: whether Plazas Vega himself could be held responsible.

His role in the military response was not in dispute. The parties agreed before trial that Plazas Vega commanded the Cavalry School, a tactical unit of the 13th Brigade, and had authority to issue orders to its troops. They also agreed that, under orders from Arias Cabrales, he deployed Cavalry School armored vehicles and troops in support of the operation. His radio call sign during the siege was “Azabache 6.”

The parties sharply disagreed, however, over whether he bore responsibility for the treatment of people taken into military custody and, specifically, for what happened to Urán.

Central to the daughters’ case was what they described as the military’s system for identifying people who were leaving the palace and were considered suspicious.

According to the complaint, survivors were screened after leaving the building. Those suspected of being M-19 guerrillas or guerrilla sympathizers were designated especiales, or “specials,” and separated from other survivors. The plaintiffs alleged that some of those classified as especiales were taken to military facilities, interrogated, tortured, killed or forcibly disappeared.

The complaint cited the experiences of several people as evidence of the alleged system. Two students who had been visiting the palace, Eduardo Matson Ospino and Yolanda Ernestina Santodomingo, were allegedly classified as especiales, taken to a military facility, blindfolded, interrogated, tortured and threatened with execution. According to the lawsuit, they were released after military personnel learned that Matson’s uncle was a provincial governor and that he knew the son of a prominent Colombian general.

Other people allegedly taken into custody were never seen alive again, including palace cafeteria employees and Irma Franco, an M-19 guerrilla captured during the operation.

The plaintiffs contended that Urán was caught up in that system.

Why a Council of State magistrate would have been treated as an especial has remained one of the unresolved questions surrounding his death.

Urán’s family has argued that it may not have been a case of mistaken identity. Helena Urán has said in interviews with Colombian news organizations that her father had worked on cases involving allegations of torture and other abuses by the armed forces during the government of President Julio César Turbay Ayala, making him an uncomfortable figure for some sectors of the military.

Colombian news reports have also examined Urán’s progressive political and religious associations, including links to Catholic liberation theology and his support for efforts to negotiate with guerrilla organizations during the government of Betancur, as possible reasons he could have attracted military suspicion.

But no specific personal motive for killing Urán has been established. The Inter-American Court’s findings concerning his disappearance and death did not identify a particular motive for why he would have been targeted.

Nor is there complete agreement in Colombia over the circumstances of Urán’s death. More recent decisions by Colombian prosecutors have reportedly taken the position that Urán remained inside the palace until the final stages of the assault and died there from a gunshot wound to the head, an account that conflicts with the Inter-American Court’s conclusion that he left the building alive in state custody.

Plazas Vega had previously faced criminal prosecution in Colombia over disappearances connected to the Palace of Justice operation. He was convicted and sentenced to prison, but Colombia’s Supreme Court overturned his conviction after finding the evidence was insufficient to sustain it.

That Colombian prosecution did not resolve the allegations at the center of the Miami case. In an order issued before trial, U.S. District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II noted that Urán’s torture and extrajudicial killing were not the basis of the criminal charges against Plazas Vega in Colombia and that Urán’s daughters had not been parties to those proceedings.

Helena Urán, Xiomara Urán and Mairée Urán filed the federal lawsuit in February 2022 under the Torture Victim Protection Act, which allows civil claims under certain circumstances against individuals accused of torture or extrajudicial killing committed under the authority of a foreign government.

The complaint identified Plazas Vega as a Colombian citizen who had established residence in Florida. A subsequent court order said it was undisputed that he moved to the United States in February 2016.

Plazas Vega sought to end the case before trial, arguing, among other things, that the daughters could not establish that he exercised the control necessary to hold him liable under the doctrine of command responsibility.

Ruiz denied Plazas Vega’s motion for summary judgment on Aug. 31, finding factual disputes that had to be resolved at trial.

Among the evidence cited in the order was testimony from Ricardo Gamez Mazuera, identified as an Army informant, who testified that he saw Plazas Vega direct two guards to take a hostage away and “work on him,” then report back to him every two hours. The plaintiffs argued that the testimony and other evidence supported their contention that Plazas Vega exercised authority over personnel involved in handling detainees. The judge did not find that allegation proved; he concluded the evidence was too conflicting for the issue to go to a jury.

According to the Center for Justice and Accountability, jurors heard from the Urán daughters, eyewitnesses, experts and Plazas Vega himself. The plaintiffs presented testimony about the alleged especiales system, including from witnesses who said they expected to be rescued after leaving the palace but instead were taken to detention facilities and tortured.

The organization said the plaintiffs also presented video and documentary evidence that they argued showed Plazas Vega played a leadership role during the palace operation.

After eight days of testimony, the jury rejected the claims against him.

“We are of course disappointed by the verdict, but believe we established a strong record of Colombian security forces’ unlawful actions at the Palace of Justice,” Claret Vargas, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Justice and Accountability, said after the verdict.

“This case built on decades of work by Colombian advocates and victims’ families to hold Colombian security forces accountable for their abuses of power,” Vargas said. “Our clients, along with many Colombian survivors of state violence, will continue to seek accountability for these violations to ensure non-recurrence in the future.”