Capítulo 25: The Extraditable’s:-PART2
At 11:40 am, dozens of guerrillas with rifles, machine guns and grenades jumped from a truck and stormed the Palace. They blasted at security guards and joined their comrades who'd entered the night before in civilian clothes. In no time, they had almost 300 hostages, including Alfonso and most of the justices. Other hostages included lawyers, secretaries, shopkeepers and shoeshine people. The guerrillas blocked stairwells with furniture and mounted machine guns on top. They issued a demand for the highest court in the nation to put the president on trial for failing to keep his promise to establish peace.
.
.
The police on the scene rescued some hostages, but were repelled with gunfire. The army showed up with tanks, grenade launchers, helicopters and hundreds of troops with hard helmets and rifles, who positioned themselves in rows against various walls for cover. They blasted rockets at the massive building with its masonry façade, making holes in the walls. Debris littered the sidewalk. Tank fire and rockets pounded the entrance door. Helicopters landed on the roof, and troops alighted to sniper fire coming through the skylights. Troops who managed to get inside couldn't get past the blocked stairwells and received machine-gun fire. A day went by with the guerrillas in control of the building.
.
.
Alfonso was trapped on the fourth floor with his bodyguards. With no guerrillas there, they felt relatively safe until a secretary screamed, "They're coming through the wall!" When the guerrillas arrived, they put up no resistance.
.
.
Alfonso's phone rang. A guerrilla commander angrily told Alfonso's son to tell the police and soldiers to stop shooting. He gave the phone to Alfonso.
.
.
"I'm all right," Alfonso said, "but see if the DAS and the police will stop shooting."
.
.
With the sound of shooting in the back-ground, the guerrilla commander got back on the phone. "If they don't stop shooting in fifteen minutes, we're all going to die!"
.
.
When Alfonso's son called back, the distraught guerrilla commander was prophesying doom because the government was refusing to negotiate. A goal of the guerrillas was to draw attention to the systematic aerial bombardment of their forces in the wake of a negotiated peace agreement with the president.
.
.
"'The shooting must stop," Alfonso told his son, who was so frustrated that he gave a radio station his father's telephone number.
.
.
With the televised attack shocking the nation - Pablo was watching, too - Radio Caracol called Alfonso. Across the country, Colombians heard Alfonso request a ceasefire and negotiations. An hour later, he spoke to his son. "The guerrillas want to negotiate. Shortly after 5 pm, the line cut out.
.
.
Around 7 pm, smoke started filtering through the building. Burning files ignited a fire, which spread to the wooden building dividers. Gagging and coughing, some of the people hiding on the top floor went down-stairs, where the guerrillas captured them. They were thrown on top of sixty hostages compressed into a bathroom, who were traumatised by the likelihood of imminent death. Some were bleeding. Others had stopped breathing. The room stank of sweat and bodily fluids.
.
.
The next afternoon, troops braced to go inside. Instead of complying with the guerrillas' demand for negotiations, the president had authorised a military assault. After a tank rammed the front door, troops charged in. The guerrillas sifted through the corpses to find the living, whom they ordered to get up. Hostages shoved out of the door were annihilated by the army. Grenades toppled some of them, leaving them injured and bleeding or dead. Guerrillas threw corpses down the stair-well, including one of the justices who looked dead but was still alive, his artificial leg shattered by a bullet. After the guerrillas left that area, the injured justice crawled to the cellar and up a flight of stairs. Mustering energy, he raised himself and his arms. "Don't shoot!"
.
.
Approximately one hundred died in the bloodbath. Alfonso didn't make it. He was one of the eleven justices - half of the Supreme Court - shot dead. All of the guerrillas died, as well as eleven police and soldiers. Some of the survivors disappeared immediately after-wards, with the government suspected of killing them.
.
.
At first, the cartel's role wasn't obvious. Many people blamed the guerrillas and the government's overreaction. Controversy remains to this day, with some researchers claiming that the fire that torched the extradition files was due to the army's response. Roberto Escobar stated that the Extraditable's had financed the operation for the destruction of the records - not mass murder - and the traffickers had offered to double the fee to the guerrillas if the government negotiations had worked out.
.
.
Survivors, including the justice who'd been thrown down the stairs with the corpses, criticised the government for not negotiating. When the president eulogised in a church for the dead justices, the survivors didn't attend.
.
.
Afterwards, some people quit working for Pablo, others for the government, including many judges.
.
.
The violence increased into 1986, with journalists, prosecutors and judges getting killed by hit men on motorbikes.
.
.
.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder