Scandals Surround Colombian Leader

[Judi Lynn]

Scandals Surround Colombian Leader
Top Aides Suspected in Secret Police Case

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 17, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 16 -- For weeks after the news broke, Colombians knew only that the secret police had spied on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians, activists and journalists. Suspicions swirled that the orders for the wiretapping, as well as general surveillance, had come from the presidential palace.

Then on Friday, the inspector general's office announced an investigation against three of President Álvaro Uribe's closest advisers and three former officials of the Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, the intelligence service that answers to the president. Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez investigates malfeasance in government agencies, and his findings can be used in criminal prosecutions.

The latest revelations have come on top of an influence-peddling scandal involving the president's two sons, Tomás and Geronimo, and a widening probe of the links between Uribe's allies in Congress and right-wing paramilitary death squads. Though Uribe remains popular for having brought security and economic prosperity to a once-chaotic country, the scandals are hitting hard just as he weighs a run for a third term.

Latin America policymakers in Washington are also watching the controversy closely. The United States has funneled nearly $6 billion in mostly military and anti-drug aid to the Uribe administration for its fight against Marxist rebels and drug cartels. Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador in Bogota who closely tracks Colombia policy, said one possible ramification of the scandal is that the Obama administration could curtail aid.

"I think that Washington is increasingly nervous about this," Frechette said. "I just don't think that people in Congress, even the Republicans, are going to feel very comfortable with this kind of thing coming out about Uribe."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/16/AR2009051602301.html?wprss=rss_world

[Judi Lynn]

1. More from the article:

~snip~
The allegations have dominated news coverage, with even media outlets that are openly supportive of Uribe revealing details embarrassing to the presidency. Government officials appear clearly uncomfortable.

"You cannot deny that this is serious, but justice is acting, the institutions are acting," Vice President Francisco Santos insisted at a recent news conference, answering a pointed question from one reporter. "What more do you want?"

~snip~
El Tiempo, in an editorial Friday, questioned how the agency could have acted against Uribe's wishes when he controls it. "In everything that has happened, what has stood out are the poor arguments of the Casa Nariño," the editorial said, referring to the presidential palace.

The spying revelations, first made by Semana magazine, detail how the DAS zeroed in on some of Uribe's most vocal opponents, including Carlos Gaviria, who ran against Uribe in the 2006 election, and journalists who oversee tough coverage of government, among them Daniel Coronell, who runs a small Bogota television station and is a columnist.

DAS agents also intercepted phone conversations, studied financial records and tailed Supreme Court judges, authorities say.

Uribe and his aides have repeatedly clashed with the court over its investigation of links between lawmakers and a now-defunct paramilitary movement. So far, dozens of lawmakers have been arrested, including Uribe's cousin, former senator Mario Uribe. The president has called the investigation politically motivated.

One of those who was followed, and had his phone calls tapped, is former senator Rafael Pardo, once an ally of Uribe and now an opponent considering a run for president. Pardo, who has been interviewed by the attorney general's office, said the surveillance began as early as 2003 and included agents who followed him and intercepted his phone calls.

"This is a regime that uses intelligence to co-opt political rights," Pardo said. "How can you have political guarantees when the intelligence service is following politicians during their campaigns?"

Uribe, who first won office in 2002, has been dubbed the Teflon President by the media because several scandals have failed to dent his popularity. But he has been clearly irked by recent reports by Coronell, the television director and columnist, that his sons invested in land whose value skyrocketed when authorities designated it part of a tax-free industrial zone.

For more than two years, Uribe's government has also had to deal with investigations that have put close aides behind bars. Among those recently charged with murder was Jorge Noguera, the former DAS director and coordinator of Uribe's 2002 campaign in Magdalena state. Prosecutors say he passed intelligence to paramilitary hit men who then killed a well-known professor, a journalist, a union activist and a politician.

Interesting to see the newspaper owned by the Minister of Defense's family hasn't hesitated to turn the knife in the little fella's back.

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/03Du7dd7A44hu/610x.jpg

The little Teflon Presidente can ride a horse and drink coffee at the same time.
_Bush Cuban "exile" Commerce Secretary Gutierrez is the guy waving to him from the ground.



Uribe meeting fellow genius from Alaska

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com.nyud.net:8090/news/politics/broward/blog/Wasserman%20Schultz%20and%20President%20Uribe.jpg

Uribe with Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, political
pawn/slave of the Miami radical right-wing Cuban "exiles."

[Judi Lynn]

2. Assassinated 17 Colombian Unionists in 2009

Assassinated 17 Colombian Unionists in 2009
Sunday 17 May 2009, San José, Costa Rica

Bogota - The number of union activists assassinated rose to 17 in Colombia this year, confirmed Favio Arias, member of the executive committee of the United Workers Central (CUT).

Arias said that persecution of the Colombian union movement has not stopped, quite the contrary, crimes against the working class increases in the country.

He pointed out that during the last decade 2,711 union activists were killed in Colombia for the simple fact of struggling for the fundamental rights of workers, pointing out that repression of the movement is permanent and relentless.

Arias explained that behind these crimes are illegal armed groups with strong ties to the government that, he said "take care to appear as if they are the only intellectual author of these outrages and violations."

These assassinations put in doubt the claims of the current administration of President Alvaro Uribe that the situation of violence, crimes and blame on the union movement is under control.

More:
http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2009/may/17/lam02.htm

[Judi Lynn]

3. Unjustly Detained Colombian Activist Freed from Jail

For Immediate Release: May 14, 2009
Brenda Bowser Soder / [e-mail] / 202-370-3323

Unjustly Detained Colombian Activist Freed from Jail
Rights Group Welcomes Release of Martin Sandoval, Calls for Freedom of Other Activists

New York– Human Rights First hails the release from jail yesterday of renowned Colombian human rights defender Martin Sandoval after six months of unjust detention. His release confirms that the criminal investigation against him was baseless and should never have been initiated.

"Prosecutors have it exactly backwards. Instead of bringing trumped-up charges against human rights defenders such as Martin Sandoval, officials should recognize that these activists strengthen Colombian democracy," said Andrew Hudson, Senior Associate at Human Rights First. "Now that the authorities have recognized that Sandoval is innocent, they should turn their attention to the long list of other activists locked-up without due cause."

In a recent report Human Rights First documented a broad pattern of baseless prosecutions of human rights defenders in Colombia, involving lengthy trials and incarcerations. Other activists currently in detention include Carmelo Agamez in Sincelejo and Andres Gil and Miguel Gonzalez in Bucaramanga.

Sandoval was accused of rebellion and of supporting the terrorist guerilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Eleven other community leaders were released at the same time as Sandoval. Sandoval is President of the Permanent Committee of Human Rights (CPDH) in Arauca and has a long record of exposing arbitrary detention, forced displacement, and extrajudicial executions. He was detained on November 4, 2008, in a joint operation involving the national intelligence service (DAS) and the Prosecutor’s judicial police (CTI) on the orders of the 1st Specialist Prosecutor’s Unit in Cucuta.

In February 2009, Human Rights First released In the Dock and Under the Gun: Baseless Prosecutions of Human Rights Defenders in Colombia,a comprehensive report which documented the widespread use of malicious criminal prosecutions and arbitrary detention to silence Colombia human rights activists.

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/media/hrd/2009/alert/447/

[Judi Lynn]

4. Indian Leader Slain in Colombia

Indian Leader Slain in Colombia
May 17,2009

BOGOTA – The governor of an Embera Katio Indian community in the northwestern Colombian province of Antioquia was dragged from his home and killed, officials said Friday.

Luis Manuel Martinez, 36, presided over the Tigre 2 settlement near the town of Caucasia.

“Unidentified armed people” burst into Martinez’s home before dawn Thursday and took him away, Antioquia government secretary Andres Julian Rendon said.

~snip~
Right-wing militiamen also are especially notorious for driving peasants off their land as war booty or to put fields to use growing crops such as palm oil.

Colombia’s leading indigenous organization said late last year that some 1,200 Indians have been killed since hardline President Alvaro Uribe took office in August 2002, while another 40,000 have been forced from their homes.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=334919&CategoryId=12393

[Judi Lynn]

5. Peasant’s Murder Earns Long Jail Terms for Colombian Soldiers

Peasant’s Murder Earns Long Jail Terms for Colombian Soldiers
May 17,2009

BOGOTA – A Colombian judge sentenced to 45 and 58 years in jail four soldiers who kidnapped and killed a peasant to claim he was a guerrilla slain in combat.

The convicts are a corporal and three privates who appeared before a court in Santa Rosa de Viterbo, a town in the northeastern province of Boyaca.

“The soldiers did not act in strict compliance with their duties as public servants, nor out of self-protection as they claimed in saying that the death was the result of an armed confrontation,” the judge found.

“On the contrary, it was shown that this was one more ‘false positive,’” the verdict continued.

Colombians have been shocked recently by revelations of numerous instances of “false positives,” cases where peasants, laborers and unemployed youths are killed in cold blood by soldiers seeking to inflate body counts.

More:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=334917&CategoryId=12393

[Judi Lynn]

6. Colombia Calling: The Other Wiretap Scandal

Colombia Calling: The Other Wiretap Scandal
By Joseph Huff-Hanon
From the May 15, 2009 issue

When the editorial staff of Semana, a feisty Bogotá-based weekly news magazine, was closing out their Feb. 21 edition, they couldn’t help but notice an unmarked car parked for several hours in front of their building. This came as no surprise to editor- in-chief Alfonso Cuéllar, who supervised a six-month long investigation of illegal wiretapping by Colombia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security, known in Colombia as the DAS.

“We knew that both the good guys and the bad guys were aware that we were working on the story,” said Cuéllar in a recent interview from Bogotá. “That’s partly why the DAS was shredding all of the evidence a month before it broke.” Backed up by numerous sources and documents, Semana exposed how members of the DAS were illegally spying on Supreme Court judges, former Colombian president César Gaviria, opposition politicians, prominent journalists and even high-ranking members of the ruling party.

Amongst a roster of Machiavellian allegations — from KGB-like tactics used to create “vice files” on prominent politicians, to the selling of sensitive intelligence to narcotraffickers and those with links to illegal paramilitary organizations and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerillas — is one charge that will be of particular interest to the United States, especially as the country contemplates the fallout from its own domestic surveillance scandal. The U.S. government, according to the Semana report, supplied the sophisticated interception devices used by the spies in Colombia.

NOT EVERYBODY IS SO AGNOSTIC

“It will be interesting to see if the rumors that are circulating in Bogotá, that the U.S. Embassy had a role in the wiretapping operation, turn out to be true,” said Joseph Fitsanakis, senior editor of IntelNews and a longtime intelligence analyst. “It won’t be the first time.”

According to sources in Bogotá, the DAS used a system called Phantom 3000, marketed by a company called TraceSpan Communications, a private U.S. company with a development center in Israel. “In this age of high security threats, when foreign terrorists and local criminals use the Internet for communication, TraceSpan is proud to provide Law Enforcement Authorities a new means to fight back,” said Hanan Herzberg, TraceSpan founder and CEO, in a press release for the product. “The system’s small footprint makes it an ideal solution for any law enforcement agency as well as the perfect solution for the Central Office.”

This wouldn’t be the first time that U.S.- supplied intelligence gear was used by the Colombian government. In 2006, the U.S. State Department awarded a $5 million contract to California-based Oakley Networks to provide “Internet surveillance software” to a specialized unit of Colombia’s National Police. The details of that deal emerged when the National Police were accused of spying on a variety of Colombian human-rights groups, as well as U.S.-based interfaith organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation. Oakley Networks, now a subsidiary of the U.S. defense contractor Raytheon Co., bills itself as a “leader in insider threat monitoring and investigations,” that offers “sophisticated monitoring and discovery technologies.”

The Oakley Networks contract came as part of the more than $5 billion the United States has sent to Colombia since 2000 to fund Plan Colombia, ostensibly an effort to eradicate production of the coca leaf. The funding has continued despite the Colombian military’s ties to right-wing paramilitary groups and to the killing of union leaders, human rights activists and indigenous people.

More:
http://www.indypendent.org/2009/05/14/colombia-calling/

[Peace Patriot]

12. So, some of the $6 BILLION in U.S. military aid to the narco-fascists running Colombia

went to Raytheon for spying on judges and leftists! How sweet!

What a perfect example of what Dwight Eisenhower meant by the "military-industrial complex."

And who are the other U.S. war profiteers getting their billions in profits from the failed, corrupt, murderous "war on drugs"?

Ach! It's enough to make one despair! They are like vultures with their claws clamped into the throat and major arteries, and ripping out of the heart, of our once fabled democracy.

[Judi Lynn]

14. It really gets you right here to know US taxpayers are funding spying on human rights activists, too

and helping Uribe's administration breathe down their necks in hope of getting them to shut the #### up about the massacres of campesinos, union workers, and indigenous peoples.

http://www.cbc.ca.nyud.net:8090/gfx/images/news/photos/2007/03/11/bush-colombia-cp-161514.jpg

The joke's on us, apparently.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Colombian Government’s Role in Human Rights Abuses

May 4, 2009
Colombian Government’s Role in Human Rights Abuses
by Garry Leech

It seems that new revelations about the Colombian government’s links to human rights abuses are appearing almost weekly. In recent weeks there have been allegations that Colombian political and military officials conspired with right-wing paramilitaries to burn the bodies of massacre victims in an effort to conceal the number of people killed by the militias; the country’s largest paramilitary organization funded President Alvaro Uribe’s 2002 election campaign; and the military’s counterinsurgency strategy has contributed to a worsening humanitarian crisis. These revelations come on the heels of evidence that the military has increasingly used extra-judicial executions as a counter-insurgency strategy in recent years and the para-politics scandal linking elected officials to the paramilitaries. In response to the Colombian military’s increasing involvement in human rights violations, the British government recently announced that it was ending military aid to Colombia. In contrast, both the U.S. and Canadian governments continue to disregard the human rights crisis in their push to implement bilateral free trade agreements with Colombia.

Salvatore Mancuso, former commander of the demobilized paramilitary organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), recently testified that his fighters systematically burned the bodies of hundreds of massacre victims. According to Mancuso, the decision to incinerate the bodies was made at a meeting between a top AUC commander and political and high-ranking military officials. The objective, at a time when increasing attention was being focused on massacres perpetrated by the AUC, was to diminish the number of killings that could be attributed to the paramilitaries. The exhumed remains of massacre victims were cremated in ovens built near the border with Venezuela.

Mancuso’s testimony came on the heels of claims by another former AUC commander that the paramilitary organization contributed funding to President Uribe’s 2002 election campaign. Diego Murillo, known by the alias “Don Berna,” commanded paramilitary troops and drug trafficking operations in Antioquia when President Uribe was governor of that department. The fact that Murillo claims to have contributed “large sums of money” to Uribe’s campaign is particularly troubling in the broader context of the ongoing para-politics scandal in which more than 60 Colombian congressional representatives—the overwhelming majority of whom are allies of the president—are either currently in prison or under investigation for links to the paramilitaries.

There has also been a dramatic escalation in the number of extra-judicial executions perpetrated by the Colombian military since Uribe assumed office. Investigators are currently looking into 1,296 cases of extra-judicial executions that have occurred since 2002. In a process known as “false-positives,” soldiers execute civilians and then dress the corpses in camouflage fatigues and pass them off as guerrillas killed in combat.

More:
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia308.htm

[Judi Lynn]

8. Originally published by Miami Herald: Did Uribe aid '97 massacre?

Did Uribe aid '97 massacre?
______________________

A jailed paramilitary fighter claims Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his brother helped plan a 1997 massacre in a village suspected of harboring leftist guerrillas, according to sworn testimony given to the nation's prosecutor general and obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

Uribe revealed and denied the allegation in an interview with Colombian radio last week, saying it was another of many fraudulent attempts to link him to the right-wing paramilitaries.

The accuser, Enrique Villalba Hernandez, 36, is a former paramilitary serving a 33-year sentence at a Bogotá penitentiary. He surrendered to authorities three months after the massacre and confessed to taking part in the killings and other atrocities.

There's no known independent evidence to support his allegation, and his testimony contains two inconsistencies, including the fact that one of the Colombian military officers who he says attended a meeting in late 1997 was killed in April of that year.

Portions of Villalba's testimony were cited by the International Human Rights Court in a ruling two years ago that condemned Colombia for the 1997 massacre in the township of El Aro, in the northern department of Antioquia. Uribe was governor of Antioquia at the time.

The ruling accused Colombian security forces of collaborating with the paramilitaries -- illegal militias created by ranchers and businessmen to fight the leftist guerrillas -- in the massacre of at least 15 El Aro residents.

It also cites testimony claiming that Uribe refused to protect the residents of El Aro after learning that a paramilitary attack was imminent.

More:
http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/colombia/doc/elaro1.html

[struggle4progress]

9. Interpol no longer wants to work with DAS

International Police organization Interpol no longer wants Colombia´s intelligence agency DAS to be its contact with Colombian authorities and officially asked the National Police to take up this role, Police Commissioner Oscar Naranjo said Saturday.

The DAS has come under pressure now that it is suspected of having conducted illegal wiretaps on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians and journalists. Some of the highest officials of the Presidency are being investigated for allegedly ordering these interceptions. A former director of the agency is investigated for alleged collaboration with paramilitary death squads.

Naranjo told Caracol Radio that Interpol had said it no longer wants to work with the intelligence agency and wants the Police to be its partner in the international fight against crime ... http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/4061-interpol-no-longer-wants-to-work-with-das.html

[Judi Lynn]

10. Wow! Can they trust Colombia's National Police, even?

Thanks so much for posting this.

Don't think the corporate media will even bring up the subject. I think they'll just let it slide. Keep it swept under the rug.

Simply amazing bit of news.

[rabs]

11. The "Tom and Jerry" scandal

(Posted this on LBN thread on same subject.)


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3880881&mesg_id=3881775

[Judi Lynn]

13. So glad to see somehow they were actually publically CALLED on this!

Would have assumed no one would dare to bring it up, considering their dad freely used the services of the death squads whenever it suited him. It gave him an edge over ordinary citizens since no one dared to actually cross the little buggerer.

1,500 becomes 1.3 million within a year. Unbelievable! And of course, why would we have expected our own corporate media to worry OUR pretty little heads with this kind of news, anyway? No reason to bother us with news which would cast Uribe in any negative light, after all.

These boys don't seem too concerned with working hard to carve out careers for themselves doing any actual WORK at anything, do they? It was so recently their own friend, David Murcia was arrested where he had fled in Panama after his money-laundering pyramid scam was exposed:

Colombia Reels After Investment Schemes
Scandal Has Riveted Residents, Shaken Economy and Damaged Uribe's Standing

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2008; Page A17

http://media3.washingtonpost.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/12/04/PH2008120404093.jpg

Colombian police escort David Murcia, owner of the
collapsed DMG investment group, in Bogota last month.
He and his associates are now in jail. (By William
Fernando Martinez -- Associated Press)

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The pied piper was a gangly, long-haired entrepreneur whose remarkable success story seemed to augur well for those who invested in his get-rich scheme. David Murcia, 28, had gone from being a traveling salesman making $130 a month to living in a luxury high-rise, driving a Ferrari and forging ties with government officials.

Investigators now say Murcia ran a secretive, hydra-headed enterprise -- part pyramid scheme, part money-laundering business -- that provided investors with returns of up to 300 percent in just a few months. His company, DMG Group Holdings, along with 250 other pyramid schemes nationwide, attracted hundreds of thousands of working-class people starry-eyed with promises of an easy payday.

But DMG and the others -- including the now-infamous DRFE, whose initials stood for "Fast Money, Easy Cash" -- soon collapsed, and Murcia and his associates are in jail. The attorney general's office said that perhaps as many as 4 million people in a country of 44 million lost money, an estimated $1 billion in four hard-hit southern states alone.

~snip~
And then there was the embarrassing news that the president's two sons -- Tomás and Jerónimo -- were friends with one of Murcia's associates in DMG, Daniel Ángel, though they had not invested in the company. That prompted Uribe to declare at a news conference: "My sons are not corrupt. My sons are not influence peddlers."

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403545.html