COVER STORY Cocaine Violence Is the Last Straw SUMMARY: The threat of death, made real by assassinations and bombs, has tipped the scaies In Colombia's cocaine battle. Last summei's murder of a respected presidential contender seemed finally too much, forging public opinion and making the nation's leader talk tough on extradition. In December, authorities gunned down a drug kingpin. The changed mood in Bogota may be behind the cartels' recent claims of retreat, though skeptics call it little but public relations. Perhapstim ofthethe battlemost famousbetweenvicthe New World's oldest justice system and its most lucra tive industry is Colombia's former justice minister, Monica de Greiff. She now teaches Colombian law at the University of Miami and lives in an elegant if small apartment with a view of the Atlantic De Greiff invokes her son's safety to explain her retreat from the Justice Ministry. shoreline. The view from her balcony is a panorama of white sand beach, rows of De Greiff resigned from the Justice Greiff will not name names, she says, palm trees and Miami's most exclusive Ministry Sept. 21 amid death threats and "These were not veiled threats; they let me apartments. Youalso see a bunch of kiddie warnings from the notoriousMedellin drug know on exactly whose behalf they were seats and a Batman tricycle that belong to cartel that members would kill 10 judges calling." de Greiffs son, Miguel Jose, who is by all for every Colombian extradited to the There are about 4,000 justices, at all accounts doing well in school. He has in United States on dmg charges. Still, she levels, in Colombia. While estmiates vary herited his mother's fair complexion and says, "there's one thing 1 want to make on the number who have been killed since winning smile. He is also the reason the clear; that I did not, as much of the North the battle for the profits of the coca trade justice minister of Colombia is now Rober American press thinks, abandon Colombia exploded into violence in the early 1980s, to Salazar Manrique, not Monica de Greiff. for fear of my own safety. I left because of all have been affected. Jorge Child, who De Greiffs rise to success was spectac threats to my son." covers the drug trade for Bogota's El ^pec- ular. Scion of a famous Medellin family — Although de Greiff says she "will never tador, Colombia's most aggressively anti her great-uncle Leon de Greiff, who died be able to speak about the threats," Colom drug newspaper,says 15 federaljudges and in 1976, was author of "Tergiversaciones," bians say it doesn't take the brain of a 55 in the provinces have been killed. A one ofthe most influential books ofColom Bolivar to piece a reasonable story to leading Colombian diplomat puts the total bian modernist poetry — by her mid-20s, gether. According to Guy Gugliotta and figure at about 100. she was one of Bogota's most respected Jeff Leen, authors of "Kings of Cocaine," And, although there have been no Su lavi^ers. Bytheage of 31 she was minister Justice Alfonso Patino got tape recordings preme Court justices killed since the barons of justice. of his wife's voice on the phone, in which made an offer of peace in mid-Januaiy, the And by the age of 32 she was on the she discussed an upcoming tour. "Maria barons occasionally let you know they are receiving end of what Colombians call Cristina won't be alive to make the trip," a there. Last fail, justices in the Supreme "telephone terrorism"; rather unsubtle re voice continued. More recently, Justice Court building discovered to their dismay minders that some pretty terrible things Alvaro Medina Moreno started receiving that their phones had been tapped for could happen to her son if she did not telephone threats on a secret number that weeks, according to Jorge Carreno Luen- change her mind on certain issues. he bought only his wife knew. While de gas, the Supreme Court president. De 8 INSIGHT/APRIL 2,1990 "It wouldn't be unfair to compare the assassination of Galan to the impact on the United States of the assassination of [John E] Kennedy." Greiff calls the traffickers "intellectual pled youngman, Lara BonillaangeredEs their generation at one blow." criminals" andsaystheyhavebeen ablenot cobar by accusing him of financing cam The palace was burned to the ground, only to buy information but also to tap into paigns with drug-tainted money and of and wooden barricades still surround the army radio frequencies. While Carreno corrupting businesses, particularly sports wreckage on Plaza Bolivar, Bogota's main does not think narcos are the canny teams, with drug profits. He had shown an square. The court now does its business out businessmen most North Americans do, he absolute willingness to implement the ex of the Banco de Credito building, an un acknowledges that "their communica tradition U^aties and, when that failed, to gainly 23-story brick skyscraper that dou tionsfacilities are absolutely excellent, not confiscate airplanes and other materiel bles as a bank. Toprevent another attack, just in terms of people — espionage, etc. used in the trade. (The judge who devel- all visitors, even regular workers, have to Rites for Lara Bonilla, a predecessor ofde GreifPs, whose 1984 assassination began thespate ofcartel acts against justice — but in electronics, radar, wiretapping." oped the case against the cartel in the Lara pass through metal detectors upon enter At the center of the death threats to Bonilla killing was also killed.) ing, at which point they are frisked for justices is Article 8 ofthe bilateral extradi Undaunted, the constitutional division weapons — re^ly frisked, the Bruce Lee tion treaty signed by PresidentsJulio Cesar of the SupremeCourt began to debate the treatment. At every floor, elevator doors Turi)ay Ayala and Jimmy Carter in 1979 treaties. On Nov. 6, 1985, the first day of open to the sight of two Colombian police (when Virgilio Barco Vargas, now pres hearings on the issue, 45 guerrillas from with machine guns trained. ident, was the Colombian ambassador in the Movimiento 19de Abril (M-19) — put After the stormingof the Palaceof Jus Washington) and ratified by the U.S. Sen up to the job by the cartel — drove an tice, the court was decidedly lessenthusias ate in 1981. armored truck into the basement of the tic about pressing its point on extradition. Palace of Justice and held the whole build In 1987, the Supreme Court rejected extra ing for more than a day, taking everyone dition by one vote. Extraditionthe heartsstrikes of drugterror dealers,into inside hostage, systematically executing But another killing, the assassinationof who have generally found justices. During the executions and the en Sen. Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento, a pres it easy to circumvent, ei suing attack by army forces, almost 100 idential candidate, last Aug. 18, tippedthe ther with money or with people were killed, including the president balanceback. Not only did the spectacle of threats, the Colombian of the Supreme Court, 11 of 24 Supreme the brave politician (whom everyone still justice system. While Co Court justices and all the members of the calls "the most incorruptible person in Co lombians referto them as "the mafia," they constitutional chamber. lombia") being shot down bydrug assassins call themselves "the Extraditables." Lola Sandoval, an administrator who at a rally in Soacha permanently change Pablo Escobar Gaviria, almost certainly was among those held hostage, recalls the North American perceptions of the nature the most powerful of the Medeilin drug event weepily:"It's terrifyingenough to be of the threat in Colombia, it also made barons, threw out the first ball ofthe season heldhostage, gruesome enough to see your Colombians realize that die extradition is in April 1984 when he ordered the ma- friends killed, but almost as bad to think of sue had moved beyond matters of national chine-gunning of de Greiffs predecessor, these people arriving and wiping out the sovereignty and that "things had changed," Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. A recklessly princi- most gentle and accomplished minds of according to one justice. INSIGHT / APRIL 2. 1990 1 tt Tumiiirminnw—t i^—rTimrii inaoiinrttiinaiiri i i iir i [niBMiiii i ninfffi ^ Survivors (left) of the M-19's dramatic takeover of the Palace of Justice in 1985; in the new building, security is a way of life. The justice, who was a student in the since Barco's emergency decree, until re matter of decentralizing, or federalizing, United States at the time of the assassina cently all low-level operatives. Even one of institutions in recognition of the fact that tion of John E Kennedy, says, "It wouldn't these extraditions bore serious fhiit: that of places like Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla be unfair to compare the assassination of Jose Rafael Abello Silva, who was shipped were no longer one-burro towns that could Galan to the impacton the United States of to Tulsa, Okla., in October. Because of his be ruled by fiat from Bogota. Decentraliza the assassination of Kennedy." absence, Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha tion still looms as a big issue, certainly the had to personally supervise the loadingof largest one in the upcoming mayoral and alan's ghost may be as a cocaine ship from Magdalena. Hushed 'national elections, which are going from powerful as his pres out of his sanctuary,he provedmuch easier now through May. "The Supreme Court," ence. Thousands came prey when the Colombian authorities went says de Greiff, "is the only significant na to a memorial service in looking for him.