Capítulo 44: Diana Turbay:-PART5
With a stoic expression, Marina approached the guards. They rotated the hood, so that she couldn't see. The Monk steered her out of the house with her walking backwards.
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On January 24, 1991, a corpse was discovered north of Bogotá, sat in an upright position against a barbed-wire fence, with her arms extended. Her outfit was intact except for her shoes, which had been stolen. The pink hood, still positioned with its eyeholes at the back of the head, was blood encrusted due to six bullets fired from a close distance. Most of the bullets had entered the left side of the face and the top of the skull. One had entered the forehead.
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The crowd watching the magistrate examine the corpse was impressed by the white hair, the well-manicured hands and nails and even the quality of the underwear.
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Unable to identify Marina, the Institute of Forensic Medicine sent the corpse to a recently dug mass grave, holding 200 people.
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The beginning of 1991 saw violence escalate across Colombia. As well as cartel violence, guerrilla groups were bombing and kidnapping and murdering. Pablo issued a statement condemning the police for their practice of kidnapping young men from the Medellin slums. He claimed that at any time of the day, ten boys would be kidnapped at random, taken to a basement or an empty lot and shot dead without any questions asked. The police were operating under the assumption that the boys worked for Pablo, or even-tally would, or supported him in some way. To back his claims up, Pablo referred to international human-rights organisations that were documenting the abuses committed by the Colombian authorities.
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Desirous of insulating themselves from the escalating mayhem, the Ochoa brothers turned themselves in, which gave the impression of a division in the cartel. At the behest of the concerned females in the family, their surrender had been negotiated by Martha Ochoa. Each brother surrendered a month or so apart from the other, from December 18, 1990 to February 16, 1991. They ended up ir. Itagüí maximum-security prison.
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Pablo was still holding out. Even though Decree 3030 - issued on December 14, 1990 established that a prisoner convicted of multiple crimes would serve the amount of time for only the crime carrying the longest sentence, there was still ambiguity over extradition. Technically, the Ochoa brothers could have been extradited, which was unacceptable to Pablo. The new decree was criticised by many parties, including family members of the hostages, which led to the drafting of a third decree.
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Diana's mother viewed the surrender of the Ochoa brothers as a positive development. As soon as the first Ochoa, Fabio, had turned himself in, Nydia, her daughter and grand-daughter, went to visit him in prison, accompanied by five members of the Ochoa family, including Martha.
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In Fabio's cell they were greeted by Fabio's father. Now seventy but with a face that still exuded charm, Fabio Sr lavished Nydia with praise for her brave efforts to free Diana. He wanted her to ask the president to extend the time limit for surrender in the new decree. Unable to do so, she recommended that they put the request in writing. He offered to help her however he could.
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When it was time for her to leave, the younger Fabio said to Nydia, "Where there is life, there is hope."
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Nydia visited the released hostage, Hero Buss, who said that after his first week of captivity, he hadn't seen Diana, but the guards had told him that she was well. His biggest concern was a rescue attempt. "You cannot imagine the constant threat that they'll kill you. Not only because the law, as they call it, is there, but because they're always so edgy they think the tiniest noise is a rescue operation." He recommended that she continue to lobby against a rescue and for a change to the time limit on surrender.
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Since Pablo's announcement about killing hostages, Nydia had been envisioning the worst for Diana. She pressed senior government officials to rely on intelligence agencies rather than launch a rescue. But her efforts were unable to fix her shattered heart, a pain aggravated by a feeling that something bad was imminent and a radio broadcast by the Extraditables pledging to wrap the hostages' corpses in sacks and drop them off at the presidential palace if the decree remained unchanged.
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She left a message: "I implore you to ask the president and the members of the Council on Security if they need to find bags of dead hostages at their door before they change the decree."
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When the president said that Decree 3030 needed more time, Nydia replied, "A change in the deadline is necessary not only to save the lives of the hostages, but it's the one thing that will make the terrorists surrender. Change it and they'll let Diana go."
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The president refused because he didn't want to reward the Extraditables with what they wanted by taking the hostages. "Democracy was never endangered by the assassinations of four presidential candidates or because of any abduction," the president said later. "The real threat came at those moments when we faced the temptation or risk or even the rumour of a possibility of an amnesty."
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Disappointed in Dr Turbay for not being more proactive, Nydia decided to write a letter to the president in the hope of inducing him to take more action, but she needed divine inspiration first. Cloistered in a room with a statue of the Virgin Mary and candles, Nydia prayed all night. At dawn, she started writing multiple drafts - some of which she tore up while sobbing endlessly.
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"I don't pretend to be composing a public document. I want to communicate with the president of my country and, with all due respect, convey to him my most considered thoughts, and a justifiably anguished plea..
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The country knows, and all of you know, that if they happen to find the kidnappers during one of those searches, a terrible tragedy might ensue…" If the president didn't amend the decree, "This would mean that the distress and anguish suffered not only by the families, but by the entire nation would be prolonged for endless months... Because of my convictions, because of the respect I have for you as First Magistrate of the Nation, I would be incapable of suggesting any initiative of my own devising, but I do feel inclined to entreat you, for the sake of innocent lives, not to underestimate the danger that time represents."
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The Extraditables issued a statement about the murder of the Prisco gang, which included two brothers and the man in charge of Diana's captivity, don Pacho. They claimed that the police had used the usual excuse of a gunfight to kill Pablo's associates in cold blood. One brother had been slain in front of his young children and pregnant wife; the other in his wheelchair - he had been paralysed during a previous assassination attempt. Within a week, a second captive would be murdered.
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