It’s been almost five years since that day that changed the lives of our family and all those who knew and loved Mario”, he says Anna Motta, mother of Mario Paciolla, United Nations collaborator, found hanged on 15 July 2020 in San Vicente del Caguán, in the Amazonian department of Caquetá, Colombia. Mario was 33 years old, he was a journalist, but he was in the South American country as a UN verifier of the peace agreements between FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army) and the Colombian Government together with 200 other operators to monitor the reintegration of former guerrillas into society.
«My son’s death was not a voluntary act, but something much more complex», continues Anna. «There are too many inconsistencies, too many details that don’t add up from the beginning, starting with crime scene cleaning with bleach, ordered by the ex-military Christian Leonardo Thompson Garzón, responsible for the security of Mario’s mission, who also had his personal effects removed, as well as the laptop, the bloody mouse and the service telephone because material considered sensitive by the UN, and also other objects present that were thrown into the San Vicente landfill and never found again. All this, before the investigative police arrived. So, I believe that understanding the motive and identifying the responsibilities will be a long journey, but if I have to go to the ends of the earth to ask for truth and justice for my son, I will get there.”
As stated in the second autopsy, carried out in Italy, the UN collaborator was strangled and then tortured. The wounds found on his wrists would have been inflicted on him, in fact, while he was already dying. His body was then hung from a noose, with his feet touching the floor, so the groove along his neck would not have been caused by a voluntary suspension but by a different pressure.
Anna picks up the thread of the conversation from the days preceding Mario’s death: «After the meeting on 10 July with his mission, he was very worried. Before that date he never revealed anything to us. During the pandemic we usually spoke every Sunday by video call, but on the Saturday before his death, on July 11, he called us at an unusual time. We found him emaciated, scared, so much so that I asked him what had happened, and he told me that he had had a discussion with his bosses, that he wanted to definitively close with Colombia and the UN and return to Naples. He also added: “I’m afraid they’ll make me pay somehow.” After we left, I had many doubts about the things he had told us and had done eight months earlier when he returned for Christmas, such as asking us to activate a new home network just for him or even the fact that he had deleted himself from social media. So, overcome by fear, I sent him a message asking if his life was in danger and he replied with “no, mom”. He probably wanted to reassure me, but I am sure that at that meeting my son will have said, known or sensed something that led him to strong concern before his death. Then on Sunday we spoke again on a video call and he told me that he had started eating again, so I also deduced that he hadn’t eaten from the argument with the bosses.”
Mario Paciolla loved life, he loved his job. He had known Colombia with Pbi (Peace Brigades International), which today is close to his parents. Mario had already been there for two years when the United Nations contacted him again to ask him to collaborate. When Pope Francis visited the country in 2017, he handled the reception of the Pontiff with PBI and other security organizations. In 2018 he finished his work with PBI and joined the UN, with a contract that would have expired on August 20, 2020. But he was in a hurry to return home to protect himself from something or someone and on July 14 he purchased the plane ticket to return to Italy, informing the Italian Embassy in Bogotá. After a few hours, however, death. Everything that happened from the purchase of the flight to the moment of his death were words and cries of desperation with his ex-girlfriend, also in the UN, to whom Mario had confided that he feared that someone close to him would want to harm him. And so it was.
The Rome Prosecutor’s Office has asked for the case to be closed for the second time because it does not believe there are sufficient elements to define it as murder, but the investigating judge is looking for further investigations and rejected the request. The lawyer Emanuela Motta, who follows the case together with the lawyer Alessandra Ballerini, declared: «The position of the Prosecutor’s Office was not shared by Mario’s family for many reasons, scientific doubts and inconsistencies widely exposed to the investigating judge of Rome».
«The suicide declared by the UN is a grotesque attempt to disguise reality. Mario was killed, betrayed by someone close to him. This is why the case must not be closed”, says Simone Campora, 40, Mario’s friend and basketball partner. «Mario had an innate talent for bonding with people. His work was the reflection of his human skills. You found him where he was needed, ready to do his part. Here’s why the case should not be closed. Not only because of the need for truth and justice that the family deserves, but also because everything found at the crime scene is chaotic and full of contradictions which suggest that those who act in that way are incompetent or, worse, feel untouchable”, concludes Simone, who together with the “Giustizia per Mario Paciolla” collective and the parents of the aid worker have opened a site to share useful information and updates on the case.
«The mariopaciolla.org site was created to bring order, give voice and remember this story», explains Erica Prisco, 46 years old, one of the collective’s activists. «In these five years we have collected documents, testimonies, articles and interviews. We wanted a sharing space to give continuity to a request that cannot be extinguished. The site is not an archive, but a dissemination tool for the creation of a social memory, in the memory of a person who dedicated himself to the end for human rights, placing a greater mission above himself.”
