Colombian conflict, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá.

The Colombian conflict began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups, crime syndicates and far-left guerrilla groups fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. Some of the most important international contributors to the Colombian conflict include multinational corporations, the United States, Cuba, and the drug trafficking industry.

Guerrilla warfare is a type of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrorism, raids, petty warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a rebellion, in a violent conflict, in a war or in a civil war to fight against regular military, police or rival insurgent forces.

The 19th of April Movement, or M-19, was a Colombian urban guerrilla movement active in the late 1970s and 1980s. After its demobilization in 1990, it became a political party, the M-19 Democratic Alliance, or AD/M-19.

The Palace of Justice siege was a 1985 attack on the Supreme Court of Colombia, in which members of the leftist M-19 guerrilla group took over the Palace of Justice in Bogotá and held the Supreme Court hostage, intending to hold a trial against President Belisario Betancur. The guerrilla group called themselves the "Iván Marino Ospina Company" after an M-19 commander who had been killed by the Colombian military on 28 August 1985. Hours later, after a military raid, the incident had left almost half of the twenty-five Supreme Court Justices dead.