Panama denies request to extradite Colombia's former spy chief

[Judi Lynn]

Panama denies request to extradite Colombia's former spy chief
Friday, 03 February 2012 15:42 Mary
Cecelia Bittner

Panama denied Friday Colombia's request for the extradition of the former head of Colombia's intelligence agency DAS who is charged with wiretapping political opponents of the government of former President Alvaro Uribe and the Supreme Court.

Panama's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that "it has reviewed the documentation submitted, and determined that extradition is not feasible in accordance with national legislation and the Bilateral Agreement of Extradition."

In January of 2012, wiretap victims and their attorney Luis Guillermo Perez traveled to Panama hoping to convince the authorities that the charges against former DAS director Maria del Pilar Hurtado have legal merit.

The former head of the DAS fled to Panama in November 2010 before the Colombian Supreme Court warranted her arrest in 2011. Del Pilar Hurtado is accused of conspiracy, abuse of power, and other charges in the case of a highly controversial wiretapping scandal.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22010-panama-denies-request-to-extradite-colombias-former-spy-chief.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. If it were just Uribe's crimes at issue, I don't think Panama would be defying the law this way.

I don't think its rightwing (and likely mafioso) president, Ricardo Martinelli, would be able to maintain this scofflaw stance just to keep a brother "made man" (Uribe) out of legal trouble on his home turf. This "asylum" has caused him no end of political trouble at home and in the region.

Suspicion: Uribe's crimes in Colombia are connected to U.S./Bush Junta crimes in Colombia and the Obama administration--and most particularly Bush Sr crony Leon Panetta--are obliged to cover those up. Thus they have placed intense pressure on Martinelli to keep Uribe's spy chief Hurtado out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors.

The U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, not only had a direct liaison to Uribe's spying/death squad operation (according to recent witness testimony), he clearly colluded with Uribe to place OTHER death squad witnesses out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and, furthermore, was the architect of that secret U.S./Colombia military agreement (later declared unconstitutional by Colombia's supreme court) that granted total diplomatic immunity to all U.S. personnel (including all U.S. 'contractors') in Colombia.

And that ain't the half of it, as to suspicions about Bush Junta crime in Colombia. I think they 'turned' the U.S. "war on drugs" into a mafia protection project, which favored some drug lords and punished others (especially the small timers and the peasant-connected like the FARC) in order to control the trade and direct its trillion+ dollar revenue stream to the Bush Cartel, U.S. banksters and other beneficiaries.

The collateral damage and the corporate-convenient damage (murders of labor union leaders) in Colombia was immense and included not just a mountain of corpses but also FIVE MILLION peasant farmers brutally displaced from their lands by state terror.

The Bush Junta may have also been using these bloody operations in Colombia as a training ground for its "war on terror" in the Middle East.

Here is an account by McClatchy news service of the Wikileaks revelations about Martinelli and his dealings with the U.S. ambassador in Panama (whom I suspect is clueless about what is really going on, and keeps complaining to the Bush Junta about Martinelli's outrages, such as his demand for help in spying on his political enemies, his political bullying, blackmailing and vengefulness and his precipitous drug raid which resulted in the targeted drug lord entirely escaping). (Um, she seems to think that her bosses in DC will be appalled by these reports. Har-har.)

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/26/112845/cables-offer-dim-view-of-president.html

This article was published about a year ago and says that Martinelli has a 70% approval rating in Panama. I read elsewhere that he had a 25% approval rating around that time. I'm reminded of Bush Jr's (s)election in 2004 and the plunge in his approval rating only a month afterward. Who you gonna believe about the "popularity" of fascist regimes? Hard to come up with reliable numbers. (Martinelli is viciously anti-union, likely involved in assassinations and other filthy bloody doings, a close crony of mafia boss and Bush operative Uribe, a lackey of transglobal corporations and war profiteers and--perhaps most damning of all--one of the few U.S. "friends" in Latin America. I would no more trust polls and votes in Panama than I do those in Colombia. Fascist political control makes free expression of opinions and free political activity dangerous.)

[Judi Lynn]

2. Martinelli's a real fat cat oily slimy right-wingding politician, guaranteed to become a US pet

in no time at all, unlike the Panamanian leftist leaders who didn't seem to realize they had a world of grief ahead, especially General Omar Torrijos, according to Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Here's a predictable article I just spotted:

[center][/center]
Muñeco de la Mafia – How long does Martinelli have?

After initially accusing the PRD, president Martinelli today blamed “communists” and “Panamanian anarchists” for being behind a “defamatory campaign” linking him with money laundering and drug trafficking. Further evidence of how he and his government are in uncontrolled panic mode was when he said that pseudo-AG Guiseppe Bonissi will travel to Costa Rica to file criminal complaints against online newspaper El País, after Jimmy Papadimitriu had earlier stated that these charges were already being filed last week. These contradictory statements, plus the fact that he can’t just order the Attorney General around as if it were his private lawyer, to us indicate that they are really trying to figure out what to do and how to get out of this mess.

For Martinelli, meanwhile, time is running out, and vice-president Varela is already doing his warming-up in the sidelines, playing the great statesman on Monday and apologizing for the murder of Heliodoro Portugal on behalf of the Panamanian State.

Our president has successfully maneuvered himself in a corner and faces a lose/lose situation. If he stays, the accusations will stay with him for the rest of his presidency, because he has no convincing answer to them and he himself keeps the narco allegations alive with erratic behavior and frivolous legal offensives. If he goes or is removed – and there is a lot of hidden and open speculation about that possibility these days – his political career is over and he will still carry the stigma of being a narco-president.

More:
http://www.bananamarepublic.com/2010/05/25/muneco-de-la-mafia-how-long-does-martinelli-have/

[center][/center]

[Judi Lynn]

3. Uribe involved in DAS, paramilitary conspiracy: El Tuso

Uribe involved in DAS, paramilitary conspiracy: El Tuso
Sunday, 05 February 2012 17:55
Adriaan Alsema

Colombian newspaper El Espectador released video Sunday in which extradited drug lord "El Tuso" testifies that former President Alvaro Uribe was involved in a conspiracy with his spy agency and former paramilitary leaders to discredit the country's Supreme Court.

In the six-hour long interrogation, El Tuso affirmed recently released statements by senior AUC chief "Don Berna" that former paramilitary leaders conspired with the Uribe government to discredit the court that after 2006 increasingly unveiled ties between coalition politicians and the AUC, which is held responsible for the forced disappearance and killing of tens of thousands of Colombians and deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2002.

According to El Tuso, whose real name is Juan Carlos Sierra, "we all worked for a common good" and that the main political accomplices in the conspiracy "were [the ex president's jailed cousin] Mario Uribe, [the ex-president's brother] Santiago Uribe, [former presidential adviser] Jose Obdulio Gaviria, [jailed former chief of staff] Bernardo Moreno, [exiled former spy chief] Maria del Pilar Hurtado, [jailed intelligence executive] Martha Leal and former President Alvaro Uribe."

The extradited drug lord, who falsely demobilized as a member of the AUC in order to receive benefits, the DAS worked together with several demobilized paramilitary leaders such as Don Berna, "Ernesto Baez," and "Julian Bolivar."

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22021-uribe-involved-in-das-paramilitary-conspiracy-el-tuso.html