Enrique Low Murtra
Enrique Low Murtra was a Colombian lawyer and politician, who served as minister of justice under President Virgilio Barco Vargas, and was assassinated by orders of Pablo Escobar because of his work as minister, like his predecessors, in prosecuting cocaine traffickers mainly belonging to the Medellín Cartel.
Beginnings
Low Murtra was born in Bogotá, being the second son of the home formed by the German researcher and academic, Rudolf Low Maus, and Maria Murtra Casanovas, a Catalan Spaniard immigrant, both chemical researchers. During his childhood he faced serious health problems that would forever mark his life. A few days after he was born his life was threatened by an illness that could never be clearly diagnosed and that also caused problems in his education; at the age of three he was involved in a traffic accident that left him in a coma for several days, and in 1949 he suffered from a rheumatic disease that permanently affected his motor skills, but which he often joked about. However, probably the hardest blow was the death of his mother in 1947 from liver cancer, the result of his research with carcinogenic agents.Low-Murtra was a student at the Gimnasio Campestre in Bogotá and graduated from the National University of Colombia in 1961. With a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation, he traveled in 1962 to the University of Illinois to study economics, and there he met Yoshiko Nakayama, whom he married in June 1963. From this marriage were born his two daughters, Amalia and Olga. Low-Murtra also studied at Harvard University, and worked as a teacher at the La Salle University, the Externado University of Colombia, University of The Andes and the University of Valle.
Civil servant
Despite a short tenure as a teacher, Low Murtra became the Global Director of the National Planning Department in 1970. Low-Murtra was awarded the Order of St. George in the rank of Knight in 1956, for being an outstanding student at the Gimnasio Campestre. In 1986, he received the Order of St. George in the rank of Officer and, years later, the rank of Commander, the highest award given by the Gimnasio.At the end of his term in office in 1974, he traveled to Washington where he worked as an official at the World Bank. In 1976 Low-Murtra returned to Colombia and worked as a research economist at Fedesarrollo. He later became vice president of the National Association of Industrialists, ANDI, Comptroller of Bogotá and Magistrate of the Council of State where, with the courage that always characterized him, he faced and survived the assault on the Palace of Justice by the M-19 in November 1985, saving the life of his colleague Lubín Ramírez who was seriously injured. In 1986, President Virgilio Barco named him director of the National Training Service (Colombia), in office, Low-Murtra brought a university-based approach to SENA, as well as a code of morality and transparency for the progress of Colombia, both of which are still in force. At that time, in consideration of his high professional merits, and since he had received the highest honors from Society and the State, Low-Murtra received the Order of Saint George in the degree of Commander and became the first alumnus to receive such an honor.