News of a Kidnapping Read online

  Colombia had not been aware of her own importance in the international drug trade until the traffickers invaded the country's highest political echelons through the back door, first with their increasing ability to corrupt and suborn, and then with their own ambitions. In 1982 Pablo Escobar had tried to find a place in the New Liberalism movement headed by Luis Carlos Galan, but Galan removed his name from the rolls and exposed him before a crowd of five thousand people in Medellin. A short while later Escobar was in the Chamber of Deputies as a representative of a marginal wing of the official Liberal Party, but he had not forgotten the insult and unleashed an all-out war against the state, in particular against the New Liberalism. Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, who represented the New Liberalism as justice minister in the Belisario Betancur government, was murdered in a drive-by shooting on the streets of Bogota. His successor, Enrique Parejo, was pursued all the way to Budapest by a hired assassin who shot him in the face with a pistol but did not kill him. On August 18, 1989, Luis Carlos Galan, who was protected by eighteen well-armed bodyguards, was machine-gunned on the main square in the municipality of Soacha, some ten kilometers from the presidential palace.

  The main reason for the war was the drug traffickers' fear of extradition to the United States, where they could be tried for crimes committed there and receive extraordinarily harsh sentences, like the one given Carlos Lehder, a Colombian drug dealer who had been extradited to the United States in 1987 and sentenced to life imprisonment plus 130 years. This was possible because a treaty signed during the presidency of Julio Cesar Turbay allowed the extradition of Colombian nationals for the first time. After the murder of Lara Bonilla, President Belisario Betancur applied its provisions with a series of summary extraditions. The traffickers--terrified by the long, worldwide reach of the United States--realized that the safest place for them was Colombia, and they went underground, fugitives inside their own country. The great irony was that their only alternative was to place themselves under the protection of the state to save their own skins. And so they attempted--by persuasion and by force--to obtain that protection by engaging in indiscriminate, merciless terrorism and, at the same time, by offering to surrender to the authorities and bring home and invest their capital in Colombia, on the sole condition that they not be extradited. Theirs was an authentic shadow power with a brand name--the Extraditables--and a slogan typical of Escobar: "We prefer a grave in Colombia to a cell in the United States."

  President Betancur kept up the war. His successor, Virgilio Barco, intensified it. This was the situation in 1989 when Cesar Gaviria emerged as a presidential candidate following the assassination of Luis Carlos Galan, whose campaign he had directed. In his own campaign, he defended extradition as an indispensable tool for strengthening the penal system, and announced an unprecedented strategy against the drug traffickers. It was a simple idea: Those who surrendered to the judges and confessed to some or all of their crimes could obtain non-extradition in return. But this idea, as formulated in the original decree, was not enough for the Extraditables. Through his lawyers, Escobar demanded that non-extradition be made unconditional, that confession and indictment not be obligatory, that the prison be invulnerable to attack, and that their families and followers be guaranteed protection. Holding terrorism in one hand and negotiation in the other, he began abducting journalists in order to twist the government's arm and achieve his demands. In two months, eight had been kidnapped. The abduction of Maruja and Beatriz seemed to be one more in that ominous series.

  Villamizar thought this was the case as soon as he saw the bullet-riddled car. Later, in the crowd that invaded his house, he was struck by the absolute certainty that the lives of his wife and sister depended on what he could do to save them. Because this time, as never before, the war was being waged as an unavoidable personal challenge.

  Villamizar, in fact, was already a survivor. When he was a representative in the Chamber, he had achieved passage of the National Narcotics Statute in 1985, a time when there was no ordinary legislation against drug trafficking but only the scattershot decrees of a state of siege. Later, Luis Carlos Galan had told him to stop passage of a bill introduced in the Chamber by parliamentarians friendly to Escobar, which would have removed legislative support for the extradition treaty then in effect. It was nearly his death sentence. On October 22, 1986, two assassins in sweatsuits who pretended to be working out across from his house fired submachine guns at him as he was getting into his car. His escape was miraculous. One assailant was killed by the police, and his accomplices arrested, then released a few years later. No one took responsibility for the attempt, but no one had any doubt as to who had ordered it.

  Persuaded by Galan himself to leave Colombia for a while, Villamizar was named ambassador to Indonesia. After he had been there for a year, the U.S. security forces in Singapore captured a Colombian assassin traveling to Jakarta. It was never proved that he had been sent to kill Villamizar, but it was established that in the United States a fake death certificate had declared him dead.

  On the night that Maruja and Beatriz were abducted, Villamizar's house was filled to overflowing. There were people in politics and the government, and the families of the two victims. Aseneth Velasquez, an art dealer and close friend of the Villamizars, who lived in the apartment above them, had assumed the duties of hostess, and all that was missing was music to make the evening seem like any other Friday night. It can't be helped: In Colombia, any gathering of more than six people, regardless of class or the hour, is doomed to turn into a dance.

  By this time the entire family, scattered all over the world, had been informed. Alexandra, Maruja's daughter by her first marriage, had just finished supper in a restaurant in Maicao, on the remote Guajira peninsula, when Javier Ayala gave her the news. The director of "Enfoque," a popular Wednesday television program, she had gone to Guajira the day before to do a series of interviews. She ran to the hotel to call her family, but all the telephones at home were busy. By a lucky coincidence, on the previous Wednesday she had interviewed a psychiatrist who specialized in treating cases of clinical depression brought on by imprisonment in high-security institutions. When she heard the news in Maicao, she realized that the same therapy might be useful for kidnapping victims as well, and she returned to Bogota to start to apply it, beginning with the next program.

  Gloria Pachon, Maruja's sister, who was then Colombia's representative to UNESCO, was awakened at two in the morning by Villamizar's words: "I have something awful to tell you." Maruja's daughter Juana, who was vacationing in Paris, learned the news a moment later in the adjoining bedroom. Maruja's son Nicolas, a twenty-seven-year-old musician and composer, was in New York when he was awakened by a phone call.

  At two o'clock that morning, Dr. Guerrero and his son Gabriel went to see the parliamentarian Diego Montana Cuellar, president of the Patriotic Union--a movement linked to the Communist Party--and a member of the Notables, a group formed in December 1989 to mediate between the government and the kidnappers of Alvaro Diego Montoya. They found him not only awake but very dejected. He had heard about the abduction on the news that night and thought it a demoralizing symptom. The only thing Guerrero wanted to ask was if he would act as mediator with Pablo Escobar and persuade him to hold Guerrero hostage in exchange for Beatriz. Montana Cuellar's answer was typical of his character.

  "Don't be an ass, Pedro," he said. "In this country there's nothing you can do."

  Dr. Guerrero returned home at dawn but did not even try to sleep. His nerves were on edge. A little before seven he received a call from Yami Amat, the news director at Caracol, and in the worst state of mind responded with a rash challenge to the kidnappers.

  At six-thirty, without any sleep, Villamizar showered and dressed for his appointment with Jaime Giraldo Angel, the justice minister, who brought him up-to-date on the war against narcoterrorism. Villamizar left the meeting convinced that his struggle would be long and difficult, but grateful for the two hours he had spent finding out
about recent developments, since for some time he had paid little attention to the issue of drug trafficking.

  He did not eat breakfast or lunch. By late afternoon, after various frustrating errands, he too visited Diego Montana Cuellar, who surprised him once again with his frankness. "Don't forget that this is for the long haul," he said, "at least until next June, after the Constituent Assembly, because Maruja and Beatriz will be Escobar's defense against extradition." Many of his friends were annoyed with Montana Cuellar for not disguising his pessimism in the press, even though he belonged to the Notables.

  "Anyway, I'm resigning from this bullshit," he told Villamizar in his florid language. "We don't do anything but stand around like assholes."

  Villamizar felt drained and alone when he returned home after a fruitless day. The two neat whiskeys he drank one after the other left him exhausted. At six in the evening his son, Andres, who from then on would be his only companion, persuaded him to have breakfast. They were eating when the president telephoned.

  "All right, Alberto," he said in his best manner. "Come over and we'll talk."

  President Gaviria received him at seven in the library of the private wing in the presidential palace, where he had lived for the past three months with his wife, Ana Milena Munoz, and his two children, eleven-year-old Simon, and Maria Paz, who was eight. A small but comfortable refuge next to a greenhouse filled with brilliant flowers, it had wooden bookshelves crowded with official publications and family photos, a compact sound system, and his favorite records: the Beatles, Jethro Tull, Juan Luis Guerra, Beethoven, Bach. After long days of official duties, this was where the president held informal meetings or relaxed with friends at nightfall with a glass of whiskey.

  Gaviria greeted Villamizar with affection and spoke with solidarity and understanding, and with his rather abrupt frankness as well. But Villamizar was calmer now that he had recovered from the initial shock, and he had enough information to know there was very little the president could do for him. Both men were sure the abduction of Maruja and Beatriz had political motivations, and they did not need to be fortune-tellers to realize that Pablo Escobar was behind it. But the essential thing, Gaviria said, was not knowing it but getting Escobar to acknowledge it as a first important step in guaranteeing the safety of the two women.

  It was clear to Villamizar from the start that the president would not go beyond the Constitution or the law to help him, nor stop the military units that were searching for the kidnappers, but it was also clear he would not attempt any rescue operations without the authorization of the families.

  "That," said the president, "is our policy."

  There was nothing else to say. When Villamizar left the presidential palace, twenty-four hours had passed since the kidnapping, and he felt like a blind man facing the future, but he knew he could count on the government's cooperation to undertake private negotiations to help his wife and sister, and he had Rafael Pardo, the president's security adviser, ready to assist him. But what seemed to deserve his deepest belief was Diego Montana Cuellar's crude realism.

  The first in that unprecedented series of abductions--on August 30, 1990, a bare three weeks after President Cesar Gaviria took office--was the kidnapping of Diana Turbay, the director of the television news program "Cripton" and of the Bogota magazine Hoy x Hoy, and the daughter of the former president and leader of the Liberal Party, Julio Cesar Turbay. Four members of her news team were kidnapped along with her--the editor Azucena Lievano, the writer Juan Vitta, the cameramen Richard Becerra and Orlando Acevedo--as well as the German journalist Hero Buss, who was stationed in Colombia. Six in all.

  The trick used by the kidnappers was a supposed interview with Manuel Perez, the priest who was supreme commander of the guerrilla group called the Army of National Liberation (ELN). Few people knew about the invitation, and none thought Diana should accept it. Among them were the defense minister, General Oscar Botero, and Rafael Pardo, who had been informed of the danger by the president so that he could communicate his concerns to the Turbay family. But anyone who thought Diana would cancel the trip did not know her. In fact, the press interview with Father Manuel Perez probably did not interest her as much as the possibility of a dialogue on peace. Years earlier, in absolute secret, she had traveled on muleback to talk to armed self-defense groups in their own territory, in a solitary attempt to understand the guerrilla movements from a political and journalistic point of view. The news had no relevance at the time, and the results were not made public. Later, despite her long-standing opposition to the M-19, she became friends with Commander Carlos Pizarro, whom she visited in his camp to search for peaceful solutions. It is clear that the person who planned the deception in order to abduct her must have known her history. At that time, no matter what the reason, no matter what the obstacle, nothing in this world could have stopped Diana from talking to Father Perez, who held another of the keys to peace.

  A variety of last-minute problems had postponed the appointment the year before, but on August 30, at five-thirty in the afternoon, and without informing anyone, Diana and her team set out in a battered van with two young men and a girl who passed themselves off as representatives of the ELN leadership. The drive from Bogota was a faithful parody of the kind of trip real guerrillas would have organized. Their traveling companions must have been members of an armed group, or had been once, or had learned their lessons very well, because they did not make a single mistake, in speech or behavior, that would have betrayed the subterfuge.

  On the first day they had reached Honda, 146 kilometers to the west of Bogota, where other men were waiting for them in two vehicles that were more comfortable. They had supper in a roadside tavern, then continued along a dark, hazardous road under a heavy downpour, and dawn found them waiting for a landslide to be cleared. At last, weary from lack of sleep, at eleven in the morning they reached a spot where a patrol was waiting for them with five horses. Diana and Azucena rode for four hours, while their companions traveled by foot, first through dense mountain forest and then through an idyllic valley with peaceful houses among the coffee groves. People came out to watch them go by, some recognized Diana and called out greetings from their terraces. Juan Vitta estimated that no fewer than five hundred people had seen them along the route. In the evening they dismounted at a deserted ranch where a young man who looked like a student identified himself as being from the ELN but said nothing about their destination. They were all confused. No more than half a kilometer away was a stretch of highway, and beyond that a city that had to be Medellin. In other words: This was not ELN territory. Unless--it occurred to Hero Buss--this was a masterful move by Father Perez to meet them in an area where no one expected to find him.

  About two hours later they came to Copacabana, a municipality that had been devoured by the urban sprawl of Medellin. They dismounted at a little house with white walls and moss-covered roof tiles that seemed imbedded in a steep, overgrown slope. It had a living room, with a small room on either side. In one of them there were three double beds, which were taken by the guides. The other, with a double bed and a bunk bed, was for the men on the crew. Diana and Azucena had the best room, which was in the rear and showed signs of having been occupied before by women. The light was on in the middle of the day because all the windows were boarded over.

  After waiting for about three hours, a man in a mask came in, welcomed them on behalf of the high command, and announced that Father Perez was expecting them but for reasons of security the women should go first. This was the first time that Diana showed signs of uneasiness. Hero Buss took her aside and said that under no circumstances should she agree to break up their group. Because she could not prevent that from happening, Diana slipped him her identity card. She did not have time to explain why, but he understood it to be a piece of evidence in the event she disappeared.

  Before daybreak they took away the women and Juan Vitta. Hero Buss, Richard Becerra, and Orlando Acevedo stayed in the room with the double bed and
the bunk bed, and five guards. The suspicion that they had fallen into a trap grew as the hours passed. That night, while they were playing cards, Hero Buss noticed that one of the guards was wearing an expensive watch. "So now the ELN can afford Rolexes," he joked. But the man ignored him. Another thing that perplexed Hero Buss was that their guns were not typical guerrilla weapons but the kind used for urban operations. Orlando, who spoke little and thought of himself as the poor relation on this expedition, did not need as many clues to discover the truth, for he had an unbearable feeling that something very serious was going on.

  The first change of house occurred in the middle of the night on September 10, when the guards burst in shouting: "It's the cops!" After two hours of a forced march through the underbrush, in a terrible storm, they reached the house where Diana, Azucena, and Juan Vitta were being held. It was roomy and well furnished, with a large-screen television set and nothing that could arouse any suspicions. What none of them imagined was how close they all were to being rescued that night through sheer coincidence. The stop there of a few hours allowed them to exchange ideas, experiences, plans for the future. Diana unburdened herself to Hero Buss. She spoke of how depressed she was because she had led them into the trap, and confessed that she was trying to push away the thought of her family--husband, children, parents--which did not give her a moment's peace, but her efforts always had the opposite result.

  The following night, as Diana, Azucena, and Juan Vitta were walked to a third house, along a very rough path and under a steady rain, she realized that nothing they had been told was true. And that same night a new guard erased any final doubts she might have had.