Jaime Garzón
Asked in a telegram to notify the number of legal brothels in Sumapaz, he answered: "Después de una inspección visual, informo que aquí las únicas putas, son las putas FARC",[7] 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.
[11] On 6 May 1998, General Jorge Enrique Mora Rangel, commander of the Colombian Army, publicly asked Escobar to investigate Garzón for his participation in the release of the hostages.
[14] On Tuesday, 10 August 1999, Garzón visited the paramilitary leader Ángel Gaitán Mahecha, who was in the Modelo Prison in Bogotá with the intention to arrange a meeting with Carlos Castaño.
[18] 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[18] approached the car and called his name, then shot him five times.
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.
[20][21] On that Friday night, sports presenter César Augusto Londoño for Noticiero CM& had to introduce a memorial note to Heriberto de la Calle, one of the characters of his murdered companion.
[22] On 5 February 2021, the court confirmed the 26-year sentence against former ADS deputy director José Miguel Narváez for the murder of Jaime Garzón after more than 21 years of the crime.
According to Judge Julio Roberto Ballén Silva, the AUC reacted against his involvement in negotiations for the release of guerrilla-held hostages on behalf of their family members.
[24] Likewise, the paramilitary leader Freddy Rendón Herrera aka "El Alemán" accused members of the military forces of being intellectual authors of the murder.
[27] On 19 August 1999, as an answer to the suggestion of a journalist, who had said that the responsibility for the crime of Garzón fell on the military superiors, the Minister of Defense, Luis Fernando Ramírez, along with several commanders of the National Army, made a public declaration.
In it, they announced that such suggestion was defamatory and that they rejected and condemned 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.
[28] On 6 January 2000, the Police of Medellín arrested Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo, alias Bochas, who, according to the Administrative Department of Security, was the assassin that shot Garzón and was recognized by María Amparo Arroyave.
[27] On 24 September 2001, the Police arrested Edilberto Antonio Sierra Ayala in Belén de Umbría under the accusation of being the other criminal who had driven the motorbike.
[27] Arroyave Montoya then disappeared[26] and then was contacted by the DAS agent Juan Ángel Ramírez García, whom Attorney General Office did not allow his investigation.
[27] In October 2002, Reporters Without Borders and Red Damocles also questioned the veracity of Wilson Llano Caballero's testimony, who also was considered to be a key witness during the first investigation and was presented as a DAS Informant: He provided pictures and information about the alleged murderers, alias "Bochas" and "Toño", and convinced his girlfriend, Maribel Pérez Jiménez, and his neighbour, Wilson Raúl Ramírez, to declare against the two suspects.
[31] On 9 May 2008, the former Paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo alias Don Berna, said that members of the criminal gang La Terraza of Medellín, that served Carlos Castaño, were the assassins of Garzón.
[32] In June 2008, paramilitary leader Jorge Iván Laverde, alias El Iguano, declared before Law of Justice and Peace that the former sub-director of the DAS, José Miguel Narváez, instigated Carlos Castaño to kill Jaime Garzón.
