30-year-old Dutch photos help ID victims in 1985 Colombia Justice Palace siege

BOGOTÁ, Colombia – It was a cold January morning in 1986 when two Dutch journalists, Jan Thielen and Harry van der Aart, arrived at a cemetery in the south of Colombia’s capital city.

Tipped off about bodies being dumped there every Saturday, the two journalists hadn’t waited long when an old and dilapidated van drove into the cemetery. A few men stepped out and began unloading bodies. Some were bloated from being drowned, others were decomposing and a few had been burned. Some of the bodies had bullet wounds.

At one point, the journalists overheard the men say: “These are those sons of bitches from the palace.”

Read on in Tico Times