Uribe camp wants me convicted to take the heat off them: Ex-DAS director

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Uribe camp wants me convicted to take the heat off them: Ex-DAS director
Monday, 13 June 2011 16:33
Jim Glade

Jorge Noguera, the former head of Colombia's intelligence agency DAS on trial for alleged ties to paramilitary death squads, told the court Monday that the former government of Alvaro Uribe wants him to be convicted so pressure on the former President will go away.

"The government in some way agrees to condemn me and suddenly the government thinks that with this ends all of the persecution against the Uribe government," said the former DAS chief who was appointed by Uribe when taking office in 2002.

Noguera is being charged in multiple cases involving the disgraced intelligence agency DAS which he directed from 2002 until 2005. He is accused of allowing paramilitaries to infiltrate the agency and allegedly ordering the murders of a Barranquilla professor, a union member and former congressman. The official is also accused of being involved in the illegal wiretapping of political opposition members, human rights activists and magistrates during the administration of Alvaro Uribe.

In February 2010 the ex-DAS head told the Supreme Court that Uribe had been aware of the agency's surveillance of suspected anti-governmental activity, whereas the Colombian government has denied knowledge of the DAS's specific operations.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/16948-uribe-camp-wants-me-convicted-former-das-director-noguera.html

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Colombia is the U.S.'s close South American ally, and also the 3rd largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

[Forkboy]

1. K&R

[dogmoma56]

2. god is just an absentee landlord, why would he hang around after giving everyone Free Will.??

[Peace Patriot]

3. I suspect that Noguera is right. There has been quite a conspiracy to keep Uribe out of jail

--a conspiracy that the U.S. has been involved in, very likely because Uribe knows too much about U.S./Bush Junta complicity in his government's many crimes, and, as we have been told, "We need to look forward not backward" on the crimes of the rich and the powerful (they teach that at Harvard). During the 2009-2011 period, the Obama administration...

--left Bushwhack ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, in place, to negotiate a SECRET U.S./Colombia military agreement, signed by Uribe, providing "total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia (--more than a decade into U.S. military presence in Colombia--why?) and to conspire with Uribe on midnight extraditions of death squad witnesses to the U.S. on mere drug charges, where they were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system by complete sealing of their cases in U.S. federal court in Washington DC (an unusual procedure), out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their vociferous objections;

--one of the first acts of Obama-appointed CIA Director Leon Panetta was to go to Bogota to give Uribe the hook (amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power)--no doubt because some 70 of Uribe's closest political cronies were under investigation or already in jail, for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking, bribery, corruption, election fraud, ponzi schemes and illegal domestic spying--including spying on judges and prosecutors who clearly had Uribe in their sights; Uribe, a Bush Cartel "made man," had to be put out of harm's way--like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their ilk, he cannot be prosecuted--and this was done by "retiring" him and "laundering" his image, with cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard (yup--teaching "law" no less) and appointment to a prestigious international legal committee, among other things;

--very likely U.S./CIA complicity in whisking the chief spying witness against Uribe--Maria Hurtado, Noguera's successor, whom prosecutors were about to question--out of Colombia and into (the U.S. client state of) Panama, where she was given instant overnight asylum as a "political refugee"--also out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their vociferous objections; this action has put the (rightwing) president of Panama, Martinelli (an unpopular man to begin with) in such hot water, internally and in the region, that it cannot have been his decision alone--U.S. pressure is very much indicated; Colombian prosecutors have now charged Hurtado herself with illegal domestic spying and have issued an Interpol warrant for her arrest--which Martinelli is defying (a very serious insult to a neighbor country and defiance of international law);

--not insignificantly, Martinelli is the U.S. client president who demanded that the U.S. provide him with spying information on his political enemies (like his bud Uribe was receiving?) in a Wikileaks revelation (the U.S. ambassador's "shock" at this demand is amusing);

--earlier this year, the U.S. State Department wrote to the judge in the Drummond Coal death squad case discouraging the judge from forcing Uribe to testify (he had been subpoenaed); Uribe had demanded of the U.S. what he called "sovereign immunity" (as the ex-king of Colombia), and, while the State Department didn't grant that strange claim, it did make clear to the judge that "national security" could be harmed by Uribe testifying (how could U.S. 'national security' be harmed by Uribe being deposed in a death squad case?);

--also, earlier this year, the U.S. State Department "fined" Blackwater for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan"--in what looks like the "tip of the iceberg" of U.S. military/contractor crime in Colombia. ("Unauthorized," my ass!)

--the U.S. and Colombia's fascist elite have also gone to great lengths to "launder" Colombia's image in general, as if the thousands of Colombian military murders of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, human rights workers, political leftists, journalists, peasant farmers and others--and the displacement of five MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, by state terror--were not the prescribed bloody preparation for U.S. "free trade for the rich" but just some sort of accident of history.

So, this is the context of Noguera's complaint that, by prosecuting him, Colombia's fascist elite is making the "Uribe problem" go away. I don't think this is true of Colombia's prosecutors and judges. They have done everything they can--with they themselves the victims of spying and death threats--to expose Uribe's crimes and investigate and prosecute him. I think that this is more the case of an allowed--or permitted--prosecution. The U.S. is permitting the Colombian prosecutors and judges to pursue justice in Noguera's case because he doesn't have the goods on Bush Junta complicity and he is not a Bush Cartel "made man." It doesn't exonerate Noguera that Uribe was giving Noguera his orders (the spy agency being used to create "hit lists" of Uribe's political "enemies" for the death squads). He is very likely guilty. But what it does do is help "launder" Colombia's image. Human rights groups have excoriated the Uribe regime not only for the murders of so many civilians but also for the failure to identify, prosecute and jail the perps. That failure is due to Uribe obstruction of justice and to gross U.S. interference in the Colombian justice system (the extraditions of death squad witnesses, etc.). The prosecution of Noguera is obviously a "safe" way to change Colombia's image, while the prosecution of Hurtado is NOT (too close to Uribe, and thus too close to Bush Jr and his junta). This is NOT the fault of Colombia's prosecutors and judges, who have been trying to do their jobs all along, hampered every step of the way.

One other thing: The U.S./Bush Junta was larding the Colombian military with $7 BILLION in money extorted from U.S. taxpayers for the U.S. "war on drugs," yet the cocaine just keeps flowing out of Colombia. The crimes of the Bush Junta in Colombia may well include use of Uribe and his mafia-like government to control the trillion+ dollar cocaine revenue stream--not to stop it, but to direct it--to U.S. banksters and others. This could be the PRIMARY reason that the U.S. is protecting and coddling Uribe. U.S. complicity in illegal domestic spying and death squad activity in Colombia may be the least of what the Obama administration and Daddy Bush pal Panetta are worried about, as to explosive scandals and peril to Bush Junta principles.