On November 6, 1985, members of the M-19 guerrilla group seized the Colombian Palace of Justice in Bogota. The military launched an operation to retake the building that lasted two days and left 100 people dead.
It was one of the most controversial episodes in South America’s recent history.
Four decades later, the details of that tragic day are being discussed, but this time in Miami.
Yesterday, a federal civil jury began hearing a lawsuit filed by three daughters of Magistrate Carlos Horacio Urán, who accuse retired Colombian Army Colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega of responsibility for their father’s torture and extrajudicial killing during that long-ago military operation.
The case focuses on one question that has remained unanswered for more than 40 years: Is Plazas Vega responsible for the murder?
More than 800 former members of the Colombian military have been arrested in the years since the military operation, and many have been convicted.
One of those is Plazas Vega, who was convicted of the forced “disappearance” of 11 people in 2010, but acquitted by the country’s Supreme Court five years later.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights heard the case in 2014 and concluded that Urán was wounded in his left leg inside the palace but left the building alive in the custody of state agents.
The court determined that he was later executed while in state custody. His body showed a gunshot wound to the temple fired from close range. The justices held Colombia internationally responsible for his forced disappearance and extrajudicial execution, and Plazas Vega was in command.
For nearly 20 years, Urán’s family was told that he had died during the fighting inside the palace. That account was later challenged by video evidence showing Urán being taken from the building alive during the operation. The court also noted evidence that his belongings were later found at a military location and that irregularities in the handling of his body and the crime scene complicated the investigation.
Plazas Vega, who lives in Weston, has long denied responsibility.
The U.S lawsuit, filed under the Torture Victims Protection Act, seeks to hold Plazas Vega civilly liable for Uran’s alleged torture and eventual killing.
The case has also drawn attention from Colombia’s government. Just hours before the trial began, President Abelardo de la Espriella publicly defended Plazas Vega via his X account, calling him a “national hero.” He instructed Colombia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the United States to evaluate how the government could support him during the U.S. legal proceedings.
De la Espriella is a criminal defense attorney who has represented people linked to paramilitary groups and drug trafficking.
The case also connects directly to South Florida. Urán’s widow, Ana María Bidegain, is a professor at Florida International University.
“The military lied to me, pushed around presidents, and then everything they said in that court was made up,” Bidegain told then New Times editor and now FIU professor Chuck Strouse in 2015. “It didn’t work.”
![Img 4949[34]](https://caplinnews.fiu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_494934-150x150.png)
