On the day he completes one month as president of Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella has ordered Foreign Minister Omar Bula and Ambassador María Consuelo Araújo to accompany the defense being carried out in the United States by Alfonso Plazas Vega, a retired Army colonel who became famous for leading the retaking of the Palace of Justice occupied by guerrillas in 1985. “If the colonel has to face legal situations due to acts committed in the exercise of his duty, in defense of the Homeland, it is the State’s duty to support him,” he wrote on X, after calling him a “hero of the homeland.”
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The president’s message comes one day before the hearing scheduled at the Southern District Court of Florida, in Miami. This is the first session of a trial in which a jury must decide whether retired Colonel Plazas Vega is civilly liable for the torture and death of the auxiliary magistrate of the Council of State, Carlos Horacio Urán Rojas, which occurred during the retaking of the Palace of Justice in November 1985. It is one of the most notorious and controversial judicial cases in recent Colombian history, due to the symbolic nature of what happened then in Bogotá and the dozens of deaths that occurred there; due to the subsequent demobilization of the guerrilla group that took over the High Courts headquarters, the M-19; due to the debate over responsibility for what happened; and because the country’s president between 2022 and 2026, Gustavo Petro, was part of that guerrilla movement.
The judicial process in Florida originates from a lawsuit filed in 2022 by Helena, Xiomara, and Mairée Urán Bidegain, daughters of the magistrate, before the Southern District Court of Florida, supported by a U.S. law that allows civil prosecution of people accused of torture residing in that country. This would eventually allow them to receive compensation, but the retired military officer does not face the risk of going to jail.
Plazas Vega has lived in Weston, South Florida, for several years. He moved there after having been in a process in Colombia related to the disappearance of two other people who were in the Palace of Justice. He spent 8 years in prison, as he had been found responsible for the crime of forced disappearance in both the first and second instances.
According to the plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) along with the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Plazas Vega — then in command of the Cavalry School of the 13th Brigade — played a central role in the military operation that ended with the torture and extrajudicial execution of the magistrate, whose body was found with a close-range gunshot wound, contrasting with the official version that for years attributed his death to crossfire with the M-19.
The colonel tried to stop the case in 2022 arguing that the family had not exhausted judicial resources in Colombia, but the court rejected that request and in 2024 confirmed that the trial would proceed, which now reaches its decisive stage before a federal jury in Miami.
Colonel Plazas Vega is a hero of the Homeland.
The Supreme Court of Justice declared him innocent, after a shameful and false judicial persecution that lasted years.
However, the strategic litigation pursues him outside the country’s borders.
If the colonel has… pic.twitter.com/xk1O0FNnEn
— Abelardo De La Espriella (@ABDELAESPRIELLA) September 7, 2026
De la Espriella, who has embraced military symbols and defended military doctrine since his campaign, warned in that message that members of the Armed Forces cannot be left “at the mercy of strategic litigation” which, according to him, affects institutions. The appointment of María Consuelo Araújo as ambassador in Washington and her personal closeness to the president give additional weight to this request, at a time when the far-right leader seeks to strengthen his bilateral relationship with the United States on several fronts simultaneously. Araújo and Plazas worked during Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s government when, between 2002 and 2004, she was Minister of Culture and he was head of the now-defunct National Narcotics Directorate.
The colonel’s wife, Thania Vega, was a senator for the Uribista Democratic Center between 2014 and 2018, elected when Plazas was in prison due to the criminal process he ultimately won. The colonel himself returned from Miami to Colombia to run for the Senate for that same party in 2018.
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