[citation needed] The M-19 had offered to "commute" the labor leader's death sentence if the government reinstated thousands of fired workers, gave public employees the right to strike and published a communique in 12 Colombian newspapers.

Many contemporary rumors and later accounts from the participants in this event have suggested that the Colombian government might have submitted to another of the M-19 demands, by allegedly giving the group 1 to 2.5 million U.S. dollars in exchange for the release of the hostages.

Nevertheless, sectors of the army opposed to the agreements of La Uribe and Corinto were responsible for attacks against the life of main leaders Iván Marino Ospina, Antonio Navarro Wolff, Carlos Pizarro, Marcos Chalita, etc.

Eventually, after tense discussions, it was decided during an emergency meeting that the military would be allowed to handle the situation and attempt to recover the Palace by force.

[citation needed] During the military assault, Supreme Court President Alfonso Reyes Echandia, was able to contact a Bogota radio station via telephone, during which he begged the authorities to agree to "a ceasefire and dialogue with the rebels."

[6] The building caught fire and ultimately more than 100 people died (including 11 of the country's 21 Supreme Court Justices),[7] and valuable legal records were destroyed.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights said in a 2014 ruling the Colombian state was responsible for forced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions during the crisis.

A Special Commission of Inquiry, established by the Betancur government, released a June 1986 report which concluded that Pablo Escobar had no relation with this event, so these allegations could not be proven (though it did not rule out the possibility either).

[14] Former Assistant of the Colombia Attorney General, National Deputy Comptroller, author and Professor Jose Mauricio Gaona along with Former Minister of Justice and Ambassador to the United Kingdom Carlos Medellín Becerra, the sons of two of the murdered Supreme Court magistrates, have pushed for further investigations into the presumed links between the M-19 and the Medellín Cartel drug lords.

Mayor of Bogota Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, has denied these accusations and dismissed them as based upon the inconsistent testimonies of drug lords.

Petro says that the surviving members of the M-19 do admit to their share of responsibility for the tragic events of the siege, on behalf of the entire organization, but deny any links to the drug trade.

[16] The M-19 eventually gave up its weapons, received pardons and became a political party in the late 1980s, the M-19 Democratic Alliance ("Alianza Democrática M-19", or (AD/M-19)), which renounced the armed struggle.

Despite the continuation of smaller scale violence against it, the AD/M-19 survived through the 1990s, achieved favorable electoral results on a local level and actively participated as a high-profile political force in the forging of Colombia's modern 1991 constitution, which replaced a conservative document dating from 1886.

Several analysts consider that the AD/M-19 reached its peak at this point in time and, while never disappearing completely from the political background, it began to gradually decline as a party on its own, although many of its ex-members have gained influence in the Independent Democratic Pole coalition.