News of a Kidnapping Read online

  President Gaviria proposed it to Jaime Giraldo Angel, his justice minister, who understood the concept immediately; he too had been thinking for some time about ways to move the problem of drug trafficking into a judicial framework. And both men favored the extradition of Colombian nationals as a means of forcing surrender.

  Giraldo Angel, with his air of a distracted savant, his verbal precision, and his genius for organization, completed the formula, adding some of his own ideas combined with others already established in the penal code. Between Saturday and Sunday he composed a first draft on a laptop computer, and first thing Monday morning showed the president a copy that still had his handwritten deletions and corrections. The title, written in ink across the top of the first page, was a seed of historic importance: "Capitulation to the Law."

  Gaviria is meticulous about his projects and would not present them to his Council of Ministers until he was certain they would be approved. He therefore reviewed the draft in detail with Giraldo Angel and with Rafael Pardo, who is not a lawyer but whose sparing comments tend to be accurate. Then he sent a revised version to the Council on Security, where Giraldo Angel found support from General Oscar Botero, the defense minister, and the head of Criminal Investigation, Carlos Eduardo Mejia Escobar, a young, effective jurist who would be responsible for implementing the decree in the real world. General Maza Marquez did not oppose the plan, though he believed that in the struggle against the Medellin cartel, any formula other than war would be useless. "This country won't be put right," he would say, "as long as Escobar is alive." For he was certain Escobar would only surrender in order to continue trafficking from prison under the government's protection.

  The project was presented to the Council of Ministers with the specification that the plan did not propose negotiations with terrorism in order to conjure away a human tragedy for which the consuming nations bore primary responsibility. On the contrary: The aim was to make extradition a more useful judicial weapon in the fight against narcotraffic by making non-extradition the grand prize in a package of incentives and guarantees for those who surrendered to the law.

  One of the crucial discussions concerned the time limits for the crimes that judges would have to consider. This meant that no crime committed after the issuing date of the decree would be protected. The secretary general of the presidency, Fabio Villegas, who was the most lucid opponent of time limits, based his position on a cogent argument: When the period of pardonable offenses ended, the government would have no policy. The majority, however, agreed with the president that for the moment they should not extend the time limits because of the certain risk that this would become a license for lawbreakers to continue breaking the law until they decided to turn themselves in.

  To protect the government from any suspicion of illegal or unethical negotiations, Gaviria and Giraldo Angel agreed not to meet with any direct emissary from the Extraditables while the trials were in progress, and not to negotiate any question of law with them or with anyone else. In other words, they would not discuss principles but only procedural matters. The national head of Criminal Investigation--who is not dependent on or appointed by the chief executive--would be the official in charge of communicating with the Extraditables or their legal representatives. All exchanges would be written and, therefore, on record.

  The proposed decree was discussed with an intensity and secrecy that are in no way usual in Colombia, and was approved on September 5, 1990. This was Decree 2047 under Martial Law: Those who surrendered and confessed to their crimes could receive the right not to be extradited; those who confessed and also cooperated with the authorities would have their sentences reduced, up to a third for surrender and confession, up to a sixth for providing information--in short, up to half of the sentence imposed for one or all the crimes for which extradition had been requested. It was law in its simplest, purest form: the gallows and the club. The same Council of Ministers that signed the decree rejected three extradition requests and approved three others, a kind of public announcement that the new government would view non-extradition only as a privilege granted under the decree.

  In reality, rather than an isolated decree, this was part of a well-defined presidential policy for fighting terrorism in general, not only narcoterrorism but common criminal acts as well. General Maza Marquez did not express to the Council on Security what he really thought of the decree, but some years later, in his campaign for the presidency, he censured it without mercy as "a fallacy of the times." "With it the majesty of the law is demeaned," he wrote, "and traditional respect for the penal code is undermined."

  The road was long and complex. The Extraditables--which everyone knew was a trade name for Pablo Escobar--rejected the decree out-of-hand while leaving doors open so they could continue to fight for much more. Their principal argument was that it did not state in an incontrovertible way that they would not be extradited. They also wanted to be considered as political offenders and therefore receive the same treatment as the M-19 guerrillas, who had been pardoned and recognized as a political party. One of the M-19's members was the minister of health, and all of them were participating in the campaign for the Constituent Assembly. Another concern of the Extraditables was the question of a secure prison where they would be safe from their enemies, and guarantees of protection for their families and followers.

  It was said that the government had issued the decree as a concession to the traffickers under the pressure of the abductions. In fact, it had been in the planning stage before Diana's kidnapping, and had already been issued when the Extraditables tightened the vise with the almost simultaneous abductions of Francisco Santos and Marina Montoya. Later, when eight hostages were not enough to get them what they wanted, they took Maruja Pachon and Beatriz Villamizar. That was the magic number: nine journalists. Plus one--already condemned to death--who was the sister of a politician hunted by Escobar's private police force. In this sense, before the decree could prove its efficacy, President Gaviria began to be the victim of his own creation.

  Like her father, Diana Turbay Quintero had an intense, passionate feeling for power, a capacity for leadership that shaped her life. She grew up surrounded by the great names in politics, and it was to be expected that she would have a political perspective on the world. "Diana was a stateswoman," a friend who understood and loved her has said. "And the central concern of her life was a stubborn desire to serve her country." But power--like love--is a double-edged sword: One wields it and is wounded by it. It generates a state of pure exaltation and, at the same time, its opposite: the search for an irresistible, fugitive joy, comparable only to the search for an idealized love that one longs for but fears, pursues but never attains. Diana experienced an insatiable hunger to know everything, be involved in everything, discover the why and how of things, the reason for her life. Some of those who were close to her perceived this in the uncertainties of her heart, and believed she was not happy very often.

  It is impossible to know--without asking her the question directly--which of the two edges of power inflicted the more serious wounds. She must have felt them in her own flesh when she was her father's private secretary and right hand at the age of twenty-eight, and found herself trapped in the crosswinds of power. Her friends--and she had many--have said she was one of the most intelligent people they had ever known, with an unsuspected store of knowledge, an astonishing capacity for analysis, and a supernatural gift for sensing another person's most hidden agenda. Her enemies say straight out that she was a disruptive influence behind the throne. But others think she disregarded her own well-being in a single-minded desire to defend her father against everything and everybody, and could therefore be used by hypocrites and flatterers.

  She was born on March 8, 1950, under the inclement sign of Pisces, at a time when her father was already in line for the presidency. She was an innate leader wherever she happened to be: the Colegio Andino in Bogota, the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New York, or Saint Thomas Aquinas Univ
ersity of Bogota, where she completed her law studies but did not wait to receive her degree.

  Her belated career in journalism--which is, fortunately, power without the throne--must have been a reencounter with the best in herself. She founded the magazine Hoy x Hoy and the television news journal "Cripton" as a more direct way to work for peace. "I'm not ready to fight anymore, or give anybody any arguments," she said at the time. "I've become totally conciliatory." To the point where she sat down to talk about peace with Carlos Pizarro, the commander of the M-19, who had fired the rocket that just missed the room where President Turbay had been sitting. The friend who told this story says, with a laugh: "Diana understood that in this business she had to be a chess player, not a boxer punching at the world."

  And therefore it was only natural that her abduction--above and beyond its emotional impact--would have a political weight that was difficult to control. Former President Turbay said, in public and in private, that he had heard nothing from the Extraditables, because this seemed the most prudent course until it was known what they wanted, but in fact he had received a message from them soon after the kidnapping of Francisco Santos. He had told Hernando Santos about it as soon as Santos returned from Italy, when Turbay invited him to his house to devise a common strategy. Santos found Turbay in the semi-darkness of his immense library, devastated by the certainty that Diana and Francisco would be executed. What struck him--and everyone else who saw Turbay during this time--was the dignity with which he bore his misfortune.

  The letter addressed to both men consisted of three handwritten pages printed in block letters, with no signature, and an unexpected salutation: "A respectful greeting from the Extraditables." What did not permit any doubt regarding its authenticity was the concise, direct, unequivocal style typical of Pablo Escobar. It began by taking responsibility for the abduction of the two journalists who, the letter said, were "in good health and in good conditions of captivity that can be considered normal in such cases." The rest was a brief against abuses committed by the police. Then it stated three nonnegotiable conditions for the release of the hostages: total suspension of military operations against them in Medellin and Bogota; withdrawal of the Elite Corps, the special police unit dedicated to the fight against drug trafficking; dismissal of its commander and twenty other officers accused of responsibility for the torture and murder of some four hundred young men from the northeastern slums of Medellin. If these conditions were not met, the Extraditables would undertake a war of extermination, including bombings in major cities and the assassinations of judges, politicians, and journalists. The conclusion was simple: "If there is a coup, then welcome to it. We don't have much to lose."

  Their written response, with no preliminary discussions, was to be delivered within three days to the Hotel Intercontinental in Medellin, where a room would be reserved in Hernando Santos's name. The Extraditables would choose the intermediaries for any further communications. Santos agreed with Turbay's decision not to say anything about this message, or any that might follow, until they had more substantive information. "We cannot allow ourselves to be anybody's messengers to the president," Turbay concluded, "or to behave in an improper way."

  Turbay suggested to Santos that each of them write a separate response, which they would then combine into a single letter. This was done. The result, in essence, was a formal statement to the effect that they had no power to interfere in governmental matters but were prepared to make public any violation of the law or of human rights for which the Extraditables had conclusive evidence. As for the police raids, they reminded the Extraditables that they had no means to stop them, could not seek to have the twenty accused men removed from office without proof, or write editorials against a situation they knew nothing about.

  Aldo Buenaventura, a public notary and solicitor, a fervent aficionado of the bullfights since his student days at the Liceo Nacional in Zipaquira, and an old and trusted friend of Hernando Santos's, agreed to carry the letter. No sooner had he walked into room 308 at the Hotel Intercontinental, than the phone rang.

  "Are you Senor Santos?"

  "No," Aldo replied, "but I am here as his representative."

  "Did you bring the package?"

  The voice sounded so proprietary that Aldo wondered if it was Pablo Escobar himself, and he said he had. Two young men who dressed and behaved like executives came to the room. Aldo gave them the letter. They shook his hand with well-bred bows and left.

  In less than a week, Turbay and Santos were visited by Guido Parra Montoya, an Antioquian lawyer, who had another letter from the Extraditables. Parra was not unknown to political circles in Bogota, but he always seemed to live in the shadows. He was forty-eight years old, had served twice in the Chamber of Deputies as a replacement for two Liberal representatives, and once as a principal for the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO), which gave rise to the M-19. He had been an adviser to the judicial office of the presidency in the government of Carlos Lleras Restrepo. In Medellin, where he had practiced law since his youth, he was arrested on May 10, 1990, on suspicion of abetting terrorism, and released two weeks later because the case lacked merit. Despite these and other lapses, he was considered an expert lawyer and a good negotiator.

  However, as a confidential representative of the Extraditables, it was hard to imagine anyone less likely to be self-effacing. He was one of those men who take ceremony seriously. He wore silver-gray suits, which were the executive uniform of the time, with bright-colored shirts and youthful ties with wide Italian-style knots. His manners were punctilious, his rhetoric high-flown, and he was more obsequious than affable--suicidal circumstances if one wishes to serve two masters at the same time. In the presence of a former Liberal president and the publisher of the most important newspaper in the country, his eloquence knew no bounds. "My illustrious Dr. Turbay, my distinguished Dr. Santos, I am completely at your service," he said, and then made the kind of slip that can cost a man his life:

  "I am Pablo Escobar's attorney."

  Hernando caught the error in midflight.

  "Then the letter you've brought is from him?"

  "No," Guido Parra corrected the mistake without batting an eye, "it is from the Extraditables, but you should direct your response to Escobar because he will be able to influence the negotiation."

  The distinction was important, because Escobar left no clues for the police. Compromising letters, such as those dealing with the abductions, were printed in block letters and signed by the Extraditables or a simple first name: Manuel, Gabriel, Antonio. When he played the part of accuser, however, he wrote in his own, rather childish hand, and not only signed the letters with his name and rubric but drove the point home with his thumbprint. At the time the journalists were abducted, it would have been reasonable to doubt his very existence. The Extraditables may have been no more than his pseudonym, but the opposite was also possible: Perhaps Pablo Escobar's identity was nothing more than a front for the Extraditables.

  Guido Parra always seemed prepared to go beyond what the Extraditables stated in writing. But everything had to be examined with a magnifying glass. What he really wanted for his clients was the kind of political treatment the guerrillas had received. He brought up the question of internationalizing the narcotics problem by proposing the participation of the United Nations. Yet in the face of Santos's and Turbay's categorical refusal, he was ready with a variety of alternative suggestions. This was the beginning of a long, fruitless process that would go in circles until it reached a dead end.

  After the second letter, Santos and Turbay communicated in person with the president. Gaviria saw them at eight-thirty in the evening in the small room off his private library. He was calmer than usual, and anxious to have news about the hostages. Turbay and Santos brought him up-to-date regarding the two exchanges of letters and the mediation of Guido Parra.

  "A bad emissary," said the president. "Very smart, a good lawyer, but extremely dangerous. Of course, he does have Escobar's complet
e backing."

  He read the letters with the power of concentration that always impressed everyone: as if he had become invisible. His complete comments were ready when he finished, and his conjectures on the subject were laconic. He said that none of the intelligence agencies had the slightest idea where the hostages were being held. The important news for the president was confirmation that they were in the hands of Pablo Escobar.

  That night Gaviria demonstrated his skill at questioning everything before reaching a final decision. He thought it possible that the letters were not genuine, that Guido Parra was working for somebody else, even that it was all a clever ploy by someone who had nothing to do with Escobar. Santos and Turbay left more discouraged than when they came in, for the president seemed to view the case as a serious problem of state that left very little room for his own feelings.

  A major obstacle to an agreement was that Escobar continued to change the terms as his own situation evolved, delaying the release of the hostages in order to obtain additional, unforeseen advantages while waiting for the Constituent Assembly to pass judgment on extradition, and perhaps on a pardon. This was never made clear in the astute correspondence that Escobar maintained with the families of the hostages. But it was very clear in the secret correspondence he maintained with Guido Parra to instruct him in strategy and the long-term view of the negotiation. "It's a good idea for you to convey all concerns to Santos so we don't get further entangled in this," he said in one letter. "Because it must be in writing, in a decree, that under no circumstances will we be extradited, not for any crime, not to any country." He also asked for specific details regarding the confession required for surrender. Two other essential points were security at the special prison, and protection for families and followers.