Diana Turbay:-PART6

The statement was the realisation of Nydia's fears. She had a sense that they were going to kill her daughter, and there was nothing that she could do to move the people who could prevent it.

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The father of one of the hostages called the president. "You have to stop these raids."

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"No," the president said. "That isn't why I was elected."

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Slamming it down, the father almost broke the phone.

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Former presidents joined the Notables in their call for a peaceful solution.

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Around dawn on January 21, 1991, Diana wrote, "It's close to five months, and only we know what this means. I don't want to lose faith or the hope that I'll go home safe and sound."

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Around 11 am on January 21, the mechanical noise of propellers intensified as four combat helicopters homed in on the house holding Diana. Acting on anonymous tips about armed men in the area, a military-style raid had been arranged in the hope of capturing senior cartel members.

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A guard appeared at Diana's door. "The law's all over us." The four flustered guards appeared incapable of standing up to the authorities.

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With the guards yelling at her to hurry, Diana brushed her teeth and put on the clothes she'd been captured in, all too large now due to her weight loss. With the helicopters buzzing, she was pushed towards an exit and given a large white hat to make her look like a farmworker. They put a black shawl over her. Her colleague Richard was wearing his leather jacket and carrying his camera equipment.

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"Head for the mountain!" a guard yelled.

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Running, the guards fanned out, ready to train their weapons on the helicopters.

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With the sun beating down upon them, Diana and Richard traversed a steep rocky path. Helicopters appeared. Gunfire erupted. Richard dived down.

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"Don't move! Play dead!" Diana said and fell facedown. "Please look at my back. Before falling, I felt something like an electric shock at my waist."

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Raising her shirt, Richard saw a hole in her body above the left hip bone. "You've been shot." A high-velocity explosive bullet had shattered her spinal column. She had life-threatening internal bleeding.

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The shooting grew louder. "Leave me here. Go save yourself."

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Richard fished a picture of the Virgin Mary out of his pocket and put it in Diana's hand. To a chorus of gunfire, they prayed together.

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With their guns pointed at Richard and Diana, two troops approached them.

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"Don't shoot!" Richard said.

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"Where's Pablo?"

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"I don't know. I'm Richard Becerra. I'm a journalist. This is Diana Turbay. She's wounded."

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"Prove it."

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Richard displayed an ID. Some farmhands emerged from the vegetation and helped them put Diana on a sheet and carry her, conscious and in agony, to a helicopter.

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Dr Turbay's phone rang. A military source said that Diana had been rescued by the Elite Corps. Listening to the radio, he heard no news. He soon found out that Diana had been seriously wounded.

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The first Nydia heard was that Diana was safely hospitalised, undergoing routine medical treatment. Whereas everyone else was optimistic, Nydia responded, "They've killed Diana!" Heading for Bogotá in a car, fixating on radio updates the last of which said Diana was in intensive care - Nydia sobbed.

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After changing clothes, she went to the airport and made a call. "They killed Diana, Mr President, and it's your doing. It's your fault. It's what comes of having a soul of stone."

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"No, Señora," the president said calmly, happy to share the good news. "It seems there was a raid and nothing is confirmed yet, but Diana is alive."

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"No. They killed her."

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"How do you know that?"

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"Because I'm her mother and my heart tells me so."

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The Turbay family boarded a thirty-year-old presidential plane for Medellín. When they landed, a presidential adviser came on board with an update. In the helicopter to Medellín, Diana had lost consciousness. They'd cut her chest open and massaged her heart manually. Hours of emergency treatment had failed to stop the bleeding. She was dead.

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At the hospital, Nydia almost collapsed upon seeing her naked daughter drained of colour on a bloodstained sheet with a massive incision on her chest. Afterwards, tortured by grief, she held a press conference. "This is the story of a death foretold." She detailed her appeals to the president. While holding the Extraditables responsible, she said that the guilt should be shared equally by the government and the president, "who, with lack of feeling, almost with coldness and indifference, turned a deaf ear to the appeals that there be no rescues and that the lives of the hostages not be placed in danger."

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The media reported her statement. The president called a meeting. He wanted to issue a denial of Nydia's claims, but instead it was decided that all of the senior members of the government would attend the funeral.

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Before the funeral, Nydia sent Diana's letters to the president.

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In a crowded cathedral, the president got up and walked towards Nydia, intending to shake her hand, his every step followed by the eyes of the mourners and the lenses of the media. Convinced Nydia would turn away from him in disgust, he held out his hand. Cameras clicked and lights flashed. Relieved that he hadn't attempted to hug her, she shook it gingerly.

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After the mass, Nydia asked to see the president to give him some new information. Although he feared she was coming to pluck out his heart, he agreed to see her.

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Wearing black, Nydia entered his office.

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"I've come to do you a favour." Having learned that the president hadn't ordered the fatal raid, Nydia asked for his forgiveness. Convinced that he had been deceived, she'd discovered that the purpose of the raid was indeed to free the hostages, not to capture Pablo. The authorities had obtained the location of the house holding the hostages by capturing and torturing one of Pablo's gang. After taking the troops to the house, the gang member had been shot, left at the scene and accounted for as someone killed in the shootout.

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The attitude of the president - which Nydia later described as a block of ice - reduced Nydia to tears and provoked her into relaunching her earlier attacks. "Just think about it. What if your daughter had been in this situation? What would you have done then?" Without giving him any time to answer, she said, "Don't you think, Mr President, that you were mistaken in your handling of this problem?"

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"It's possible." Nydia shook his hand and bolted out.

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The police had claimed that Diana had been shot in the spine by one of the kidnappers. Pablo's version of events concurred with Nydia's story. He said the police had tortured two of his men, whom he named and for whom he provided ID numbers. Running away from the house, Diana had been shot by the police. Several innocent farmhands had also been shot and accounted for as criminals killed in the gun battle.

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On January 30, 1991, the Extraditables announced that the order to execute Marina Montoya had been issued on January 23. "If she was executed, we do not understand why the police have not yet reported finding her body."

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The statement from the Extraditables caught the eye of the pathologist who'd performed the autopsy on Marina. She was located in a mass grave, next to the corpse of a boy who was wrapped in her pink sweat-suit. Her son identified her distinctive hands.

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The deaths of Diana and Marina swung more people in favour of a peaceful settlement. With the president acquiescing, Decree 3030 was issued on January 29.

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The Extraditable announced, "We will respect the lives of the remaining hostages. They said one hostage would be released right away. But the negotiations were stalled by Pablo's concerns about the continued killings of slum kids by the police, an alliance between General Maza and the Cali Cartel to kill Pablo's people and the safety of his family and associates after he surrendered.

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