Colombia Escobar - Escobar's son meets journalists whose building was bombed by his father
NAME: COL ESCOB 20091209I
TAPE: EF09/1150
IN_TIME: 10:14:29:13
DURATION: 00:02:30:09
SOURCES: AP TELEVISION
DATELINE: Bogota - 9 Dec 2009
RESTRICTIONS:
SHOTLIST:
1. Sebastian Marroquin (on left) son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, inside office of El Espectador newspaper, talking with the editor-in-chief, Fidel Cano, and other journalists
2. Various of Marroquin (on left) talking to Cano (on right)
3. Cano seated at table listening to Marroquin
4. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Sebastian Marroquin, son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar:
"I admit that my father committed probably three times the number of crimes that I imagined he did. I cannot confirm any of them because I never saw him with a gun killing somebody. That is the truth, but I'm very aware of the pain he inflicted in the country."
5. Close of Marroquin
6. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Sebastian Marroquin, son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar:
"I have asked the Galan family and the Lara family for forgiveness for my father's crimes, as he killed both heads of the family. But I must have the humility and the capacity to ask for forgiveness to the relatives of every one of his victims, even the ones nobody remembers. This is not a question of asking for forgiveness in a selective way, this is for everybody."
7. Marroquin and Cano seated
8. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Sebastian Marroquin, son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar:
"Since 1984 this family (Escobar) hasn't lived with Pablo Escobar under the same roof. The day after the killing of Rodrigo Lara we already awoke in Panama. We ran away, I did not understand why, I was 7 years old. Rodrigo Lara Jr was 8 years old. From that day we never lived with my father. We shared, whenever it was possible because of his clandestine life, some weekends. Many people might have the expectation that I have plenty of things to tell about Pablo Escobar but sadly, because I was his son, I was one of the people who had less time with him."
9. Close of Marroquin's hand
10. Marroquin leaving the newsroom
STORYLINE:
The son of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar visited the headquarters of El Espectador newspaper in Bogota on Wednesday, whose old building was completely destroyed in 1989 by a car bomb attack ordered by his father.
32-year-old Sebastian Marroquin, Escobar's only son, changed his name from Juan Pablo Escobar for his protection, and has been living in Argentina since his father's death in 1993.
Marroquin left Colombia with his mother and younger sister in 1994, a year after his father was killed in a police operation in Medellin when he was 16 years old.
Marroquin has denied any involvement in his father's criminal activities and has also denied inheriting any of his father's multibillion-dollar fortune.
On Wednesday, Marroquin met with the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Fidel Cano, whose uncle was also killed under Escobar's orders in 1986.
Guillermo Cano, chief of El Espectador at the time, was one of the fiercest critics of the drug trafficker in the media.
Marroquin offered a formal apology to Cano and his family for the death of his uncle and for the attack on the newspaper building.
In a meeting with Cano and other journalists in the capital Bogota, Marroquin spoke of his father saying he was "very aware of the pain" his father inflicted in the country.
"I must have the humility and the capacity to ask for forgiveness to the relatives of every one of his victims," Marroquin said.
Escobar's son was in Bogota for the national premiere on Thursday of the documentary "The Sins of My Father" by Argentinean director Nicolas Entel.
The 90 minute documentary shows, among other things, a meeting between Marroquin and the sons of Luis Carlos Galan and Rodrigo Lara, two top politicians Escobar ordered assassinated in the 1980s.
Marroquin apologised to Lara last year in a secret visit to Colombia shown in the documentary.
Marroquin told Cano at Wednesday's meeting that he had asked both politicians families for their forgiveness for his father's crimes.
The documentary has already been shown in festivals around Europe but Marroquin warned that those looking to find secrets about Escobar's life might be disappointed.
"Since 1984 this family (Escobar) hasn't lived with Pablo Escobar under the same roof," he said.
"Many people might have the expectation that I have plenty of things to tell about Pablo Escobar but sadly, because I was his son, I was one of the people who had less time with him," Marroquin said.
Colombians have been fixated by Marroquin's emergence from a low-profile life in Argentina to ask forgiveness and seek what he called reconciliation.
Last month, Colombia's police director said Marroquin was directly involved in the cartel business, even killings, rejecting the denials of Marroquin.
The accusations that General Oscar Naranjo made in an interview with The Associated Press in November were bolstered by the assertions of a former cartel lieutenant, who said the younger Escobar accompanied his father on a police captain's killing and took drug money.
However, acting Chief Prosecutor Guillermo Mendoza said Marroquin faces no criminal charges in Colombia and there are no open investigations into his activities.
During Pablo Escobar's reign in the 1980s of the world's leading cocaine cartel, he and his allies ordered the killings of hundreds who opposed them, including politicians, judges and journalists.
Escobar at one point even offered a bounty of more than 4-thousand US dollars for any police officer killed in Medellin, his hometown.
More than a hundred were killed.