Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar was gunned down in 1993. In an exclusive interview for London's The Observer, his son tells Uki Goñi why he had to seek reconciliation with the children of Pablo's victims

In the many years I have spent researching the post-war escape of Nazis from Europe, the crimes of Argentine mlitary repressors, as well as interviewing such persons and their relatives, I had never come across anyone with an instinctive understanding of the need for reconciliation and forgiveness comparable to that of Sebastián Marroquín.

His father, the arch-criminal Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, was responsible for hundreds of murders, for plunging Colombia into decades of mindless violence from which it has yet to emerge, as well as poisoning millions around the world with the cocaine that made him a billionaire.

I was very fortunate to obtain an exclusive interview with Marroquín for London's The Observer, who carried it as a full-page story.

In my work I have often heard young Germans, Argentines, even Austrians and Italians, proclaim they bear no obligation to atone for the sins of their elders, an attitude that ultimately only passes the burden of guilt to ensuing generations, even if in diminishing quotas.

Sebastián, in an act that combines moral courage and a life necessity, has chosen with the documentary Sins of My Father directed by Nicolás Entel to say instead: 'The responsibility to atone ends here, with me.'