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Uribe's dealings with rightwing paramilitaries remains an untold story, says Andy Higginbottom
Your report on the find by
Colombian security forces diverts attention from the mounting evidence
of President Álvaro Uribe's own links with rightwing paramilitary death
squads (Laptop emails link Chávez to guerrillas, May 16).
The
article states that Interpol "announced that a two-month forensic
investigation of the laptops seized in a raid by Colombian security
forces concluded they belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (Farc)".
None of the findings in Interpol's report
"conclude" any such thing, as in conclude after an investigation. The
two Interpol investigators are computer experts: neither speaks
Spanish, and they were tasked solely with inspecting the kit. Interpol
assumes that the equipment it inspected was indeed used by Farc, it did
not investigate the circumstances of their seizure, when the Colombian
army killed 25 guerrillas in its raid into Ecuador on March 1. Are the
Colombian security services to be trusted?
It is they who
presumably sourced the article's claim that: "Leaks from the trove of
16,000 files and photographs have suggested high-ranking Venezuelan
officials plotted to help the Marxist group to obtain weapons and
funding."
Your article is more remarkable for the story it did
not tell, also involving computers. In the early hours of May 13 Uribe
extradited 14 leaders of the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de
Colombia from its custody to penitentiaries in the US. This manoeuvre
leaves in tatters any justice component of the government's own
"justice and peace" process. Despite admitting the murder of more than
4,000 people, the "para" leaders have been extradited on drugs charges,
not human rights violations, for which they may never stand trial.
In
the course of this sudden extradition, top paramilitary Salvatore
Mancuso's computer and the hard drives used by four other leaders have
disappeared from Itagüí maximum security prison. One drive was used by
"Tuso Sierra", known to have business dealings with the former senator
Mario Uribe, President Uribe's cousin and lifelong political ally.
With
no less than 96 Uribe supporters in the country's congress being held
in detention or under investigation for links with the paramilitaries,
this latest manoeuvre adds to the suspicion that Uribe himself enjoys
impunity at home and in the US. International press investigation of
the allegations is thus vitally important, but still woefully absent.
Uribe
and Chávez exemplify the two social models competing for the
continent's future: neoconservatism versus "socialism of the 21st
century". The Andean region is split. Like Uribe, Peru's Alan García is
eager to strike a free trade and investment deal with the European
Union, while Ecuador and Bolivia, like Venezuela, will not accept the
EU's privatisation terms.
In Lima this month I joined 8,000
participants from indigenous peoples' groups, environmental
organisations and social movements - at the "people's summit"; we
rejected the primacy of corporate interests in the relationship between
our two continents. We would all appreciate a better informed reporting
of these inspirational developments rather than mere snapping at Chávez.
· Dr Andy Higginbottom is a senior lecturer at Kingston University and is secretary of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign
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