The wedding of Juan Fernando Petro, brother of Colombian President Gustavo Petro.Courtesy
The most disturbing thing about this story is not the certainties, but the contradictions that overshadow it. Juan Fernando Petro, brother of President Gustavo Petro, got married during the pandemic lockdown. The civil wedding was in Cajicá (Cundinamarca), in 2020, and the celebration was made, a year later, in Barranquilla, with two events: one, in the morning on the shores of the beach, and another, at night of the same day, in the courtyard of a house. In the images, the couple appears seated in the middle, and the assistants, dressed in white, surround her in an austere ceremony. Among the few guests are the wife and daughters of Kiko Gómez, a former governor convicted of six homicides (my father's, one of them). Recently, Gómez has managed to get him transferred from a high-security prison to one of his choice and lower security.
Bibiana Bacci, wife of Kiko Gómez, does not appear in the images. One of the witnesses, who asked not to be named, said that Juan Fernando warned them to be careful not to take photographs. Although she does not appear, several of the guests confirm that she was. At the morning meeting, under the tents on the beach, they did an esoteric ritual for the bride and groom; In the evening they celebrated with whiskey. The bride and groom were showered with envelopes with money as gifts. Peace Commissioner Danilo Rueda was one of the guests. He says that that day he met Bacci and managed to exchange a few words with her. Alfonso Manzur (current Superintendent of Surveillance) and Pedro Niño, Kiko Gómez's lawyer, were also invited to the celebrations.
A few days ago I contacted Juan Fernando Petro to ask him about the celebration and his relations with Bibiana Bacci. He responded upset, in voicemails, with a hyperbolic rant about the manipulation of truth in the media. Before asking him about the Barranquilla party, he referred to it as a gathering of friends working for peace. Asked if Bacci had been at the party, he detoured, diverted the conversation. "The question is monstrously simple, but what's behind it (...) It's monstrously complex," he said. Finally, he denied that she had been there. He said he knew her from the handicraft work of one of her daughters. When I asked her if she had received a gift from Bacci, she rebuked that if she was a criminal: "As far as I know she is a citizen like any other." I repeated the question several times. He never answered her.
Although Juan Fernando denies that it was the celebration of his marriage, Superintendent Alfonso Manzur and Commissioner Danilo Rueda refer to it as such. When I told Juan Fernando that Rueda had said that Kiko Gomez's wife was there, he replied that Rueda has betrayed him since he took office as commissioner. The official explained that he could not betray him, since he had not agreed his appointment with anyone.
Petro and Rueda, then director of the NGO Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace, were involved in a controversy over a visit they made to La Picota prison, in the middle of the 2022 electoral campaign. Several prisoners claimed that Juan Fernando offered them judicial benefits; He denied it, but the visit was the starting point for other discussions. The meeting was arranged by Pedro Niño, Kiko Gómez's lawyer. Earlier this year, the Gulf Clan appointed the lawyer as its spokesperson in Petro's total peace talks, but as soon as his appointment was made public, the government annulled the appointment.
President Petro has asked the Prosecutor's Office to investigate his brother for alleged entanglements with lawyers who asked for money from prisoners seeking to enter the total peace project to obtain prison benefits such as reduced sentences. Without mentioning names of intermediaries, a few months ago Commissioner Rueda denounced that a prisoner had paid 120 million to a lawyer to be transferred to a prison of his choice. He never said who the prisoner was or what the jail was.
Juan Fernando said his work in prisons had nothing to do with Kiko Gomez. Rueda explained that Gómez, in his capacity as perpetrator, through Niño had sent audios to the Inter-Church Commission acknowledging his responsibility (without specifying in what). Gómez wanted the Special Jurisdiction for Peace to take him in order to obtain benefits such as lesser sentences for his crimes.
The friendship between the brother of the president and the wife of a criminal is not a crime, but it is questionable if it results in benefits for the convict. Kiko Gómez was mayor of Barrancas, La Guajira, and governor of the same department. He is serving two sentences (the maximum sentence imposed is 55 years) for six murders and two conspiracy to commit crimes with illegal armed groups. He was imprisoned in La Picota prison and on December 23 he requested a transfer to El Bosque prison in Barranquilla, which was approved in record time: 15 working days later, on January 16, he was already in Barranquilla.
It was an unusually quick decision. "At least it can take between two and three months to complete," said an official from the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC). The most unusual thing is that it was given as an "encouragement of good behavior," when Gomez has held parties in prison, has bribed INPEC officials and in several raids have confiscated prohibited items. That is, he has broken the law. Without any compelling argument, the director of INPEC, Daniel Fernando Gutierrez, authorized the transfer to El Bosque prison. There are serious discrepancies between what he said in an interview with W Radio, in which he stated that the transfer was due to health problems due to the climate in Bogotá, and the request and resolution for transfer, in which there is no legal medical opinion, nor a report from the Disciplinary Council. Minimum requirement mandated by law when it comes to transfers as an incentive to good conduct.
INPEC skipped other procedures: it did not convene the transfer advisory board, which, in the case of those convicted of serious crimes, will have to analyze whether it is appropriate. He was sent to a prison that does not meet the maximum security requirement, and to a special yard for public servants, even though his crimes have nothing to do with the exercise of his public function. Their transfer completely ignores the logic and principle of resocialization that accompanies the custodial sentence within Colombian legislation. He ignores that Gómez has not provided any kind of truth for the cases in which he is accused and investigated, nor in which he was convicted, nor has he made reparations to his victims.
Its power, even today, extends to other departments of the Caribbean region. Several of the hitmen hired by him for the commission of his crimes are from Barranquilla. Emboldened, he once told one of his victims (who was later murdered) that if he wanted to kill him he had to look for hitmen in Medellín or Cali, because those on the coast belonged to him. In 2014 the Supreme Court of Justice decided that his trials could not be advanced in La Guajira but in Bogotá because his power in the department was such that there were no guarantees. These circumstances remain in force and demonstrate that the justice system and the structure of the State on the Caribbean coast are not adequate to treat Gómez, including the execution phase of the sentence.
There are many times that the former governor has tried to evade justice by buying false medical diagnoses to achieve house arrest, or judges to achieve freedom (a judge was convicted of having sold him a habeas corpus). Its transfer means that its processes pass to Barranquilla. The message of Gomez Cerchar's return to the Caribbean region contains no small amount, even less so in the pre-election period. In fact, his daughter Juana Gómez Bacci is a candidate for mayor of Barrancas.
It took 20 years for Kiko Gomez to be convicted of my father's murder. In 2018, when he was a candidate, President Gustavo Petro stood up in the Plaza de Barrancas and rejected any support from Kiko Gómez: "Let him keep his money and his votes, because they are dirty with blood and cocaine," he said. Today, paradoxically, during his government he has benefited from an illegal transfer of which I personally informed the Minister of Justice. So far it has done nothing.
Subscribe here to the newsletter of EL PAÍS about Colombia and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of the country.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber