Court: Colombia must pay for innocent man's death

LIBARDO CARDONA Comments 0
Published: November 13, 2009

BOGOTA (AP) — A top court has found the Colombian government liable for the police killing of an innocent construction worker during the botched rescue of a prominent journalist nearly 19 years ago.

The Council of State ruled that the Defense Ministry and national police were responsible for the January 1991 killing of German Eduardo Giraldo and ordered the state to pay his family $179,000 in damages.

Defense attorneys were first notified on Friday of a July court ruling that said police found Giraldo in a Medellin house while searching for kidnapped journalist Diana Turbay and others being held on orders of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar.

"Not finding a single kidnap victim, the agents decided to detain and take away Mr. German Eduardo Giraldo, who was at the location because he was related to a resident and was helping to install a water heater in the bathroom," the court wrote.

Two days later, Giraldo's body was recovered after a botched police rescue outside Medellin that also killed Turbay, the daughter of former president Julio Cesar Turbay. Police at the time had passed off Giraldo as being involved in Turbay's abduction.

But the court determined that a machine gun found in Giraldo's hands had been planted by police and that he couldn't have fired it because it was inoperative.

Turbay, who was kidnapped Aug. 30, 1990, was among several prominent Colombian journalists — including current Vice President Francisco Santos — who Escobar ordered seized in his campaign to fight extradition for drug traffickers to the United States.

The lawyer for Giraldo's family, Javier Villegas, told The Associated Press it would now appeal to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission to help bring his killer to justice.

"The case remains in complete impunity because no one has paid even a day of jail time for the murder," he said.