The months long domestic spying scandal in Colombia has “enmeshed” President Alvaro Uribe in accusations that he may have been involved authorizing the surveillance of political opponents, human rights groups, and journalists. As the New York Times’ Simon Romero writes this morning, new records recently obtained by Colombian journalists from the newspaper Semana include phone calls between the U.S. embassy’s legal attaché in Bogota and a supreme court justice in the country who says Mr. Uribe’s supporters continue to be investigated for ties to paramilitary groups in the country. The most serious charges are still those leveled against Jorge Noguera, the former chief of Colombia’s spy agency, the Department of Administrative Security or DAS who is said to have provided information about trade union leaders and a prominent sociologist to paramilitary groups who eventually carried out their murders. While Mr. Noguera stepped down from his position in the DAS four years ago, new records seem to show that such spying, via wiretaps, may still be occurring. One human rights lawyer, who got part of his file recently released, says DAS records show “photos of his children, transcripts of phone and e-mail conversations, details on his finances and evidence that DAS agents rented an apartment across from his home to monitor him”—a situation he compared to one out of “The Lives of Others.” DAS works closely with U.S. intelligence on a number of issues, says the NYT, and last week DOS spokesman Ian Kelly called the most recent allegations of domestic spying, “troubling and unacceptable.”
In a series of drug-related Mexico stories today, the LA Times reports on yet another mass killing at a Mexican drug rehab clinic. In Ciudad Juarez, two doctors and eight patients were murdered in what was the second such killing in just two weeks. Nearly 20 were killed at a similar clinic in Juarez in early September. After Tuesday’s killings, the mayor of Juarez ordered 10 other rehab centers closed in the center due to irregularities in their permits and a lack of security. The chief of security in the city said the measures were to prevent another such massacre. Also in Ciudad Juarez, five others were killed early Wednesday morning, attacked a popular nightclub where many celebrated Mexico’s independence day. Five more were shot to death at a carwash in the city the same day. City officials called the killings part of drug gangs’ “war of extermination.”
The LAT also reports on the arrest of a former U.S. anti-drug official, formerly working in Mexico. Richard Padilla Cramer, once the ICE attaché in the U.S. consulate in Guadalajara, is now accused of working with drug cartels in the country, identifying “turncoats” and “advising” cartels on law enforcement tactics. Cramer was arrested in early September in his Arizona home, and investigators say the case is particularly worrisome given that his “his rank and foreign post made his work especially sensitive.”
On the drug issue in Bolivia, Bloomberg writes that Bolivia’s Evo Morales says his country’s anti drug forces seized some 19 tons of cocaine this year, an increase from the previous one-year record for seizures (11 tons) in 2005. He added that sophisticated labs in the country have been discovered without the aid of DEA officials who he expelled last November over a political dispute. Nevertheless, the Obama administration “decertified” Bolivian anti-drug efforts, the second such U.S. decision in the last two years, saying the country “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months” to adhere to its ‘obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.’” WOLA and the Andean Information Network have rejected the U.S. decision, saying it is “unwarranted and risks unnecessarily complicating efforts underway to improve U.S.-Bolivian relations.” According to WOLA’s John Walsh, “Bolivia's decertification indicates that the Obama administration is out of step with developments in the region, and missing opportunities for more constructive relations.” (Check back at WOLA’s website www.wola.org for the press release, not yet posted).
In news from Honduras this morning, the AP reports that four candidates running for president in Honduras have agreed to support the San Jose Accords process, forwarded by Oscar Arias. After meeting with the Costa Rican president, the candidates released a statement saying they supported the return of Manuel Zelaya before November elections. However, says the AP, “the group stopped short of directly calling on the interim Honduran government to drop its opposition to the U.S.-backed agreement.” Cesar Ham, a candidate from a smaller left leaning party, refused to sign the statement, saying, in the AP’s words, “it was too weak to break the impasse gripping the Honduras.”
And South American defense and foreign ministers were unable to reach an agreement at Quito Unasur meetings on the issue of a new U.S. military presence in Colombia, writes Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the fear of an arms race in Latin America was a topic of discussion as Uruguay’s Tabaré Vázquez met with Sec. of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday (video here). The U.S. Sec. of State argued that Venezuela, in particular, should be “clear about its purposes” and “should be putting in place procedures and practices to ensure that the weapons that they buy are not being diverted” to insurgent groups, criminal organizations, or drug traffickers, reports the news service.
In other news, the Venezuelan Penal Forum, a human rights group in the country, says over 2000 critics of President Hugo Chavez have gone to trial over the last seven years for crimes related to protests against the government. In Brazil, two police officers were sentenced to approx. 500 years in prison each for the 2005 killings of 29 individuals near Rio de Janeiro. And Venezuela and China inked a 16 billion oil deal Tuesday that would give Chinese investors access to the petroleum rich Orinoco basin.
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