Jaime garzon was born on october twenty-four,nineteen-sixty an died

on august thirteen, nineteen-ninety-nine in bogota. was a lawyer,

journalist ,humorist and peace colombian.a work in T.V and radio
are most its role as peace negotiator,besides having help any
public office as more of Andres Pastrana Arango (nineteen-ninety-
eight, nineteen-ninety).
His teenage met the ELN and the movement for a while .later
would be very close to leading political figures when they joined the
Pastrana campaing for more of bogota and the government of Cesar
Gaviria in the constituency in nineteen-ninety-one .their entry into the
national medis would make him a recogniced character and the
pioner of political humor on colombian T.V.
His history and proximity to outstanding personalities put him on a
relevant point in the peace process betwen the armed actore in the
process of release of hostages help by FARC. in diferent ways
,Garzon inform the public opinion was the victim of threats.on august
thirteen, nineteen-ninety-nine was killed by two gunmen near
radionet studies where he worked.

Jaime Garzn was born in Bogot on October 24, 1960. He studied law and political science at
the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, but his active involvement in politics and television did
not allow him to finish.
[1]

Mayor of Sumapaz[edit]
Garzn joined the political campaign of Andrs Pastrana Arango for mayor of Bogot. After
winning the elections, Pastrana nominated him as mayor of Sumapaz, an underdeveloped rural
locality in the district, in 1988.
[2]
Garzn tried to improve the standard of living in Sumapaz. In a
year, he created a health center, the school was improved
[3]
and the only street of town was
paved.
But his originality was not well seen by the central administration of Pastrana. Asked in a
telegram to notify the number of legal brothels in Sumapaz, he answered: "Despus de una
inspeccin visual, informo que aqu las nicas putas, son las putas FARC",
[4]
a sarcastic
answer typical of his sense of black humor, roughly translated as "After a visual inspection, I
report that the only whores around here are the fucking FARC", a wordplay, as in Colombian
Spanish the word 'putas' could mean both 'whores' as noun, and 'fucking' as
an intensifier adjective. That answer and other eccentricities, brought to the conclusion by the
central administration that he had founded a brothel in Sumapaz.
[5]
The municipal government
secretary, Volmar Prez Ortiz, signed his destitution.
[4]
For this reason, Garzn sued
Pastrana's administration; the case was ruled in his favor only in 1997.
Between 1990 and 1994 he worked at the Nario House during the presidency of Csar
Gaviria. He helped in the translations of the new Colombian Constitution of 1991 into the
indigenous languages and as a presidential adviser in communications.
[6]

Career[edit]

In 1987, the director of the Noticiero de las 7, Antonio Morales Riveira, knew of the fame of the
Mayor of Sumapaz in imitating politicians. He brought Garzn to the newscast; it was the first
time he would appear on television.
[7]

He worked on various television parodies, becoming famous with the TV
show Zoociedad (Zoociety) in the 1990s which contained humor about materialistic society and
politics. Garzn then started working on a program called "Quac! El Noticero", collaborating
with actor Diego Len Hoyos until 1997.
Garzn created many different and instantly recognizable fictional characters, the last of which
was his debut as "Heriberto de la Calle", a shoe polisher who interviewed different
personalities, including politicians.
Year Program Character Producer and channel
1990
1993
Zoociedad merson de Francisco con Elvia Luca Dvila
Producciones
Cinevisin: Cadena
Uno and Cadena Dos
1995
1997
Quac! El
noticero
With Diego Len Hoyos as Mara Leona
Santodomingo: Nestor El, Inti de la Hoz,
'companion' Jhon Lenin, 'reporter' Wiliam
Garra, Godofredo Cnico Caspa
RTI: Cadena Uno
1997 La Lechuza Heriberto de la Calle Caracol Radio
Peace activist[edit]
On March 23, 1998, 200 FARC guerrillas kidnapped 32 persons on the Villavicencio -
Bogot road. Among the hostages were four US citizens and an Italian.
[8]

On March 27 a commission, with the authorization of anti-kidnapping czar Jos Alfredo
Escobar and led by Garzn, allowed the release of nine of the hostages.
[8]

On May 6, 1998, General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel, commander of the Colombian Army,
publicly asked Escobar to investigate Garzn for his participation in the release of the
hostages.
[9][10]
On June 4, Escobar, defended the role of Garzn in the release of the hostages
as a humanitarian mission.
[10]
Garzn tried to have an appointment with General Mora Rangel,
but he was not accepted. The journalist sent a telegram to the military where he said: "General,
do not look for enemies among the Colombians that risk their life everyday to build a proud
nation as I want and as you are fighting for."
[11]

In May 1999 Garzn said in a cocktail party in front of some personalities, among them the US
Ambassador, that General Mora was accusing him of being a collaborator of the FARC.
[12]

On May 25, 1999, Senator Piedad Crdoba was kidnapped by the paramilitary group of Carlos
Castao, and she was accused by him of being a collaborator of the guerrilla.
[13]
According to
Senator Crdoba, Castao also mentioned Garzn. Once she was released, she met the
journalist and warned him of the danger.
[14]

The participation in the process of the FARC's hostage releases and the intention to promote a
dialogue of peace brought him many threats, but the most noticeable were those from
Castao.
[11]

Murder[edit]
On Tuesday, August 10, 1999, Garzn visited the paramilitary leader ngel Gaitn Mahecha,
who was in the Modelo Prison in Bogot with the intention to arrange a meeting with Carlos
Castao. The meeting was to be held on August 14 in the Crdoba Department.
[11]

On Wednesday, August 11, Garzn said to his wife and a makeup artist that he was going to
be killed the next day.
[11]

On Friday, August 13, at 5:45, local time, Garzn was approaching the Radionet station in his
gray Jeep Cherokee.
[15]
When he was turning toward the south coming from 26th Street in the
Barrio Quinta Paredes sector, in front of Corferias, two men riding a high velocity white
motorcycle with hidden plates
[15]
approached the car and called his name, then shot him five
times. He was 38 years old.
[11]

The word quickly spread as his own colleagues at Radionet were the first to give the news to
Colombia.
[16]
Hundreds of people went out into the streets. The vehicular traffic worsened when
a pedestrian bridge fell onto the North Highway, near 122nd Street, because a group of people
thought wrongly that the funeral would pass by the site. Three people died and 30 were
injured.
[17][18]

On that Friday night, sports presenter Csar Augusto Londoo for Noticiero CM& had to
introduce a memorial note to Heriberto de la Calle, one of the characters of his murdered
companion. He introduced the note saying: "that's all for sports ... f***king country!".
[19]

Investigation[edit]
According to Judge Julio Roberto Balln Silva, the AUC reacted against his involvement in
negotiations for the release of guerrilla-held hostages on behalf of their family members. There
are several versions of what happened in the days preceding his murder. In one of them
Garzn was informed of an order to assassinate him; he then contacted Castao, who
scheduled a meeting with him to take place just the day after his murder and sent a counter
order to abort the assassination. The order apparently either never reached the actual killers,
or came after it was too late. This led some to speculate that the meeting was a trap.
[20]

An investigation conducted by the TV program Contrava directed by Holman Morris shows
evidence of the participation of agents of the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS,
the state intelligence agency) by using false witnesses, and therefore the investigation turned
away from the real events.
[21]
Likewise, the paramilitary leaderFreddy Rendn Herrera aka "El
Alemn" accused members of the military forces of being intellectual authors of the murder.
[22]

Castao is accused of being the mastermind of the crime[edit]
On September 13, 1999, the authorities reacted promptly to guarantee the arrest of the
assassins of the journalist. Four people participated in the first investigations as key witnesses
of the crime: Mara Amparo Arroyave Mantilla, Wilson Llano Caballero alias El Profe, Maribel
Prez Jimnez and Wilson Ral Ramirez Muoz.
[23]

Although it was too early at the moment of the crime and Mara Amparo Arroyave was on the
4th floor of the building (100 meters from the place of the assassination) and the two criminals
wore helmets, she gave a detailed description of one of the assassins' face and clothing.
[24]

On August 19, 1999, the Minister of Defense, Luis Fernando Ramrez, along with several
commanders of the National Army, did a public declaration as an answer to the suggestion of a
journalist, who said that the responsibility for the crime of Garzn fell on the military superiors.
They said that such suggestion is defamatory and that they reject and condemn the crime
of one of the best journalists of the end of the century, the best humorist and the sharpest critic
of the Colombian society of the last decades.
[25]

On January 6, 2000, the Police of Medelln arrested Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo, alias Bochas.
According to the Administrative Department of Security, he was the assassin that shot Garzn
and was recognized by Mara Amparo Arroyave.
[24]

On April 24 Carlos Castao, top leader of the AUC, was formally accused of being the
mastermind of the crime.
[26]
On June 6 he was declared absent defendant.
[24]

On September 24, 2001, the Police arrested Edilberto Antonio Sierra Ayala in Beln de
Umbra under the accusation of being the other criminal that drove the motorbike.
[24]

On January 3, 2002, the tribunal made official the closure of the process. The request of the
civil part to review the case was ignored by the tribunal.
[24]

Complaints of manipulation of the investigation[edit]
On January 21, 2000, the Attorney General was the first entity to put in doubt the veracity of
the testimony of Mara Teresa Arroya Montoya. The Attorney ordered a careful inspection of
the place she argued that she saw the crime.
[24]
According to lawyer Alirio Uribe Muoz, the
Attorney concluded that from the place she said that she saw the crime, it is impossible to
observe the details of the assassins. The Attorney found several contradictions in her
description and little coincidences with other witnesses, who were nearer to the place of the
crime: none of them could remember the face of the assassins, because they were very fast,
but none of these inconsistencies were reviewed in the record.
[24]
But Arroyave Montoya
disappeared
[23]
and the Attorney General Office did not allow the investigation of DAS official
Juan ngel Ramrez Garca, who contacted Montoya.
[24]

In October 2002, Reporters Without Borders and Red Damocles questioned the veracity of
another witness that was considered a key witness during the first investigation: Wilson Llano
Caballero, alias El Profe, who was presented as an Informant of DAS. He provided with
pictures and information about the allegedly murders, alias Bochas and Too. He convinced
his girlfriend, Maribel Prez Jimnez, and his neighbor, Wilson Ral Ramrez, to declare
against the two suspects.
[23]

Confessions of paramilitary leaders[edit]
On March 11, 2004, Judge Julio Roberto Balln Silva acquitted the two alleged assassins of
the journalist. The sentence allowed the opening of the investigation to agents, officials and
false witnesses of the first process.
[27]
The tribunal concluded once more that Carlos
Castao was the mastermind of the crime and sentenced him to 38 years in prison and a fine
of 790 million pesos.
[27]
In April of that very year, Castao was killed probably by disputes
among the same paramilitary members.
[28]

On May 9, 2008, the former Paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo alias Don Berna, said
that members of the criminal gang La Terraza of Medelln, that served Carlos Castao, were
the assassins of Garzn.
[29]

In June 2008, paramilitary leader Jorge Ivn Laverde, alias El Iguano, declared before Law of
Justice and Peace that the former sub-director of the DAS, Jos Miguel Narvez, instigated
Carlos Castao to kill Jaime Garzn.
[30]
A month later, in July, another paramilitary former
member, Ever Veloza Garca alias HH, gave to the Attorney General a USB drive that
belonged to Carlos Castao. He said that in the USB there was the prove that he ordered to La
Terraza gang to assassinate Jaime Garzn. Veloza said also that Castao said in different
moments that the crime of Garzn was a mistake and that "it was done to make a favor to
some friends of the National Army".
[31]

In October 2009 former paramilitary leader Freddy Rendn Herrera, alias "El Alemn", said to
Justice and Peace process that Carlos Castao ordered the killing of the journalist under
"specific request of senior military leaders of the time".
[32]