On August 18, 1989, Luis Carlos Galán, a liberal presidential candidate for Colombia for the 1990-1994 period, was gunned down while greeting a crowd of supporters in the central square of the town of Soacha, near Bogotá.

Subsequent investigations concluded that Galán was murdered by Henry Pérez and Jaime Rueda under the orders of Rodríguez Gacha and Escobar, the latter instigated by the politician Santofimio, fueling the hatred that Escobar had towards Galán for having indirectly exposed him as a criminal when he was campaigning politically in 1982, in addition to leading, together with his fellow party member Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Minister of Justice, a frontal fight against drug trafficking and political corruption.

[7][8] In mid-1989, Galán led the opinion polls as the favourite candidate to win the elections the following year, provoking the jealousy of Santofimio, who wanted to get rid of his political opponent.

Since 2004, Santofimio ended up in prison when his complicity in the crime was discovered, along with that of the director of the DAS, General Miguel Maza Márquez, since the latter changed the guard that protected Galán.

His campaigns were different from other political candidates because he represented youth and renewal in liberalism, the majority force in Colombia at that time, and he was far removed from party symbols or interventions in the public square.

Aided by Ortega, Escobar counterattacked by warning the minister to prove his accusations under penalty of criminal charges for slander and defamation, in addition to showing the public a copy of a check from drug trafficker Evaristo Porras to Lara's senate campaign.

After a failed attempt to negotiate surrender in Panama with former President Alfonso López Michelsen as mediator, the war claimed the lives of Tulio Manuel Castro Gil, the judge in charge of investigating Lara Bonilla's murder; Judge Zuluaga Serna; Magistrate Hernando Baquero Borda, defender of the Extradition Treaty; Colonel Ramírez Gómez;[34][35][36] Guillermo Cano, editor of the newspaper El Espectador;[37][38][39][40] and other journalists.

At the hideout, Escobar gave Prisco a citizenship card with the name of Pacho Herrera, an enemy of the Cali Cartel, so that he could buy a vehicle in his name that would be used in the attack to kill Galán.

[55] Days later, on August 5 of that year, Los Priscos proceeded to place a rocket in a vacant lot aimed at the University of Medellín where they knew Galán would go to give a conference guarded by Colonel Waldemar Franklin Quintero of the police.

[57] This made Escobar turn to Rodríguez Gacha, who, having a fairly strong paramilitary apparatus with which he had had militants of the Patriotic Union assassinated, and with influence in Bogotá, coordinated everything necessary to be able to carry out the crime.

[64][65] Unlike Cruz, who had been Galán's head of bodyguards for years, Torregrosa was just a police officer who had recently returned to the DAS, whose CV was full of reprimands and dubious references, and who also claimed to have taken the course for the protection of politicians.

[75] On the morning of August 18, 1989, Colonel Valdemar Franklin Quintero was killed without bodyguards, claiming, like the murdered Guillermo Cano Isaza, that he did not want to risk the lives of others to protect his own, and that he tried to go unnoticed, a strategy that did not last due to corrupt elements in the police.

No citizen can [simply] be a spectator of the authorities' fight against violence.Just two days earlier, on August 16, 1989, Judge Carlos Valencia García was assassinated after signing a ruling against Pablo Escobar and other members of the Medellín Cartel for the murders of Jaime Pardo Leal and Guillermo Cano.

[92] Galán climb onto the wooden platform where he would give his speech, accompanied by councilman Julio César Peñaloza Sánchez and two bodyguards; Santiago Cuervo Jiménez and Pedro Nel Angulo.

[105][106] The respective autopsy was carried out in the morgue of Forensic Medicine a day later on August 19, subsequently, Galán's corpse was taken to the Congress of the Republic where it remained in a burning chamber in the elliptical hall of the House of Representatives.

[118] Following President Virgilio Barco's forceful order to capture those responsible, the DAS and the DIJIN, the latter under the command of Colonel Óscar Eduardo Peláez Carmona, unleashed several operations that led to the arrest of Alberto Jubiz Hazbum and four other innocent people.

[119] Jubiz, was a chemist from Barranquilla of Arab origin who had traveled to Bogotá to take a hydroponics course with the idea of finding an alternative that would allow him to recover economically from the loss of 86 hectares of tomatoes, a consequence of the overflow of the Magdalena River.

On August 22, the same day that Jubiz planned to return to Barranquilla, while he was waiting for the merchant Jaime de Jesús Valencia Martínez to close a deal, suddenly a group of police officers burst into the Mezzanine Building located on Carrera 19 and Calle 79 in Bogotá, to carry out a raid.

Rueda Silva denied the charges and Chávez Vargas accepted and confessed his participation, also providing enlightening clues, such as involving a lieutenant of the intelligence network of B2 of the XIII Brigade with the surname Flórez, key for the assassins to be able to infiltrate the political event.

Instead, he returned to Puerto Boyacá, creating his own paramilitary group and remained in hiding until April 23, 1992, when he was shot dead in a confrontation with the police in Honda (Tolima).

He died without knowing the ruling of the Council of State that declared the Attorney General's Office, the Police and the Ministry of Defense responsible for his arbitrary detention, and condemned them to pay compensation of 3,000 million pesos.

Maza Márquez and Peláez were forced to pay the nation the compensation money under the sentence of having condemned innocent people in an effort to give a false image of efficiency and effectiveness in the fight against crime.

[145] Torregrosa, after having maintained contact with Rueda Rocha and being on the payroll of Rodríguez Gacha, is apparently still alive to date living in Venezuela or Spain after having disappeared in 1990, and despite having been declared dead by the National Registry of alleged natural causes in Santa Marta.

[152][153][154][155][156] Carlos Castaño Gil (alleged instigator), according to Diego Fernando Murillo 'Don Berna', the late leader of the self-defense forces was also the mastermind as he considered that Galán was against paramilitarism.

Initially he was not linked despite his well-known connections, but on August 19, 1999, a judge in Cundinamarca established evidence that implicated Alberto Santofimio in the murder of Luis Carlos Galán and sent copies so that the Prosecutor's Office could investigate him after learning of the plan.

[174][175][176] Hernando Durán Dussán has also been accused of being an accomplice, in addition to his relationship with paramilitary groups, as well as his apparent political arm, the National Renewal Movement (MORENA) and the Peasant Association of Cattle Ranchers and Farmers of the Middle Magdalena (ACDEGAM), who gave him publicity after Galán's murder.

Officers Luis Felipe Montilla Barbosa, then Commander of the Soacha police, and the former head of Public Order of the then Administrative Department of Security (DAS), retired colonel Manuel Antonio González Henríquez, were also linked.

[184] Both former general Serna and former colonel Oscar Peláez Carmona were also linked to the investigation as they were the ones who orchestrated the judicial setup against Alberto Jubiz Hazbum, Norberto Murillo Chalarca, Armando Bernal Acosta, Pedro Telmo Zambrano, Luis Alfredo González Chacón and Héctor Manuel Cepeda.

[185] In his statements before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, former General Maza Márquez has also indicated that high-ranking Army officers, who in turn held high positions in the State, planned the assassination, carried it out and covered up the perpetrators.

[12][187][188] This was held in March 1990 and Cesar Gaviria, Galán's successor, was chosen as the presidential candidate,[189] and was subsequently elected president of Colombia in May of the same year, in the midst of the wave of terror and violence of that time.