Italy wants to give up finding the truth about Mario Paciolla’s death in Colombia

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Four years after the violent death of Mario Paciolla in Colombia, a new request by the Rome prosecutor's office to close the investigation threatens to nullify the efforts of his family, friends and activists to reconstruct the truth and obtain justice in his case.

On July 15, 2020, Mario Paciolla's lifeless body was found in his home in San Vicente del Caguán, where he worked as an official for the UN mission to verify peace agreements. Although the autopsy conducted in Colombia led to the authorities concluding that suicide by asphyxiation was the cause of death, the family immediately rejected this account of events, stressing the possibility that he had been murdered. 

To start with, their doubts were fueled by a series of deliberate misdirections by the UN mission officials and the police officers who were present at the scene. For years, Mario's parents, Anna Motta and Pino Paciolla, have been fighting a battle for truth and justice for their son, making appearances at schools, universities and centers of activism. We sent questions to them both.

Nearly four years after Mario's death, there is now another request by the prosecutor's office to close the investigation. What do you think are the motivations behind the prosecutors’ request?

Four years ago, when Mario's death turned our lives upside down and we began the journey to find the truth for our son, we knew the road would be all uphill, and that we would be stonewalled by the powers-that-be. The investigation is a complicated one, so the prosecutors resigning themselves to shelving it could be seen as the most comfortable solution. We imagine there might be international pressures, and trade and diplomatic relations that need to be safeguarded. 

But we cannot accept that the safeguarding of such relations would be allowed to undermine our demand for justice. We will demand that the investigation continue, particularly on the elements that no one has ever given us an explanation for. Our lawyers, assisted by experts we have confidence in, will fight the request to close the investigation. 

While it’s true that at this point there doesn’t seem to be a clear motive, there is scientific and circumstantial evidence that tells us Mario was killed. More than anything else, that is the truth that we know and that we hope will emerge during the legal proceedings.

What do you think are the elements that would need to be taken into consideration to reopen the investigation?

Coroner Fineschi conducted a long and difficult autopsy, because the condition of the body was not optimal. His conclusions were: “It is important, in any case, to point out that certain evidence – which has no alternative explanation in the suicide scenario – overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis of strangulation with subsequent hanging of the body.” 

And he was even more explicit about the cuts on the wrists: “With regard to the presence of life, the evidence found does not allow us to exclude with any reasonable certainty the possibility that the injuries were inflicted in the final moments of life or even post-mortem.” Isn’t all this enough? Does one need more?

The Colombian authorities' version, i.e. that Mario committed suicide, builds on some observations of a psychological nature. What do you think are the elements that refute this reconstruction?

Mario loved life. He was full of joy to be alive and had strong ties to his family, his friends, his city. He would never willingly inflict such great pain on us. Mario did everything he possibly could to return to Italy. On July 14, at 12:30 a.m., he bought a ticket on a July 20 humanitarian flight back to Europe – a flight from Bogota to Paris. At that point, he notified the embassy that he was leaving Colombia. The time between the purchase of the ticket and the presumed time of death is about two hours: in those two hours he is supposed to have decided, prepared and executed his suicide. As the judge said in his order rejecting the motion to dismiss the case and ordering further investigations, this makes no sense. 

We have always maintained that Mario's worries were mistakenly interpreted as “psychological distress.” The fact is he harbored a legitimate, and realistic, fear for his safety. We are certain that he immediately understood that he might be killed. In the July 11 phone call, he told us: “They will make me pay.” In a phone call to a friend, he said clearly, twice: “They're going to set up a scene,” which is exactly what happened.

How has communication between you and the UN been during these four years?

It is clear that there has been outrageous negligence on the part of the UN. In the hours after Mario's death, the organization didn’t even notify the Italian embassy of the violent death of an Italian working for them. When the terrible news reached us at 6:30 p.m. on July 15, 2020, we contacted the embassy to confirm Mario's death. They were only able to confirm it at 10:30 p.m. No one has ever provided an explanation on why this was the case. Over the years, the UN has never explained its behavior, to us or to our lawyers. The mission has always claimed that they started an internal investigation, but we never heard anything about that. 

For us, it’s crucial to know why all international protocols, including those of the organization itself, were disregarded in the case of Mario's death. Furthermore, we would like to know why our son's writings were not returned to us, the things he wrote down: personal observations, journalistic articles, poems and stories – which were certainly there, because he always told us about them. He must have prepared to take them to Italy with him. His loss is a searing pain that will never heal for as long as we live, but the absence of these remembrances of him, of the human value of what he wrote, is a loss that could have relieved our grief to some extent.

Right from the start, you began to seek justice and truth for your son, even though you knew it would be a long and costly legal battle. Apart from the courtrooms, what are the other areas in which you need to fight for truth and justice for Mario?

Mario's sad story cannot and should not be only a family affair. First of all, it should put the state under serious scrutiny, which has never been interested in giving us answers. Only a few politicians, acting individually, have put forward parliamentary questions and still support us. We also spoke before the Senate Human Rights Commission, but obviously the hearing could not bring about resolution. 

That is why we are grateful whenever we are invited to tell the story of our son's life, especially to young people – to tell them about who Mario was and the many good things he did, and still could have done. We believe it’s necessary to create a social truth: to tell Mario’s story so that no person who left their country, for whatever reason, ends up returning to their loved ones in a casket.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/colombia-uccide-italia-archivia on 2024-07-14