Reply #4: Colombia’s Dirty War: ‘Chuzadas’ and the future of the DAS [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia’s Dirty War: ‘Chuzadas’ and the future of the DAS
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 23:42 Pablo Rojas Mejia

The DAS ‘chuzadas’ scandal has continued to evolve. What seemed at first to be yet another infiltration of the government by organized crime has revealed itself as a case of political persecution, a true Colombian ‘dirty war’.

Semana, the Colombian news weekly spearheading the journalistic investigation into the wiretapping scandal, recently described ‘chuzadas’ as a ‘dirty war’, a term not used lightly in Latin America.

A true dirty war has three basic elements and the chuzadas scandal has all three in spades.

The first is official sanctioning. Everything indicates that most illegal ‘chuzadas’ were perpetrated by a secret DAS entity called the Special Intelligence Group 3. Although the G-3 was not officially a branch of the DAS, it was capable of sending official orders to other government entities and use state resources.

Documents indicate that the G-3 was created by controversial DAS director Jorge Noguera in 2004. Notably, after scandals drove Noguera out of the DAS in shame in 2005, the coordinator of the G-3, Jaime Fernando Ovalle, stayed at the DAS until November 2008.

The second element is political persecution. , It has become increasingly clear that DAS wiretapping was nothing short a campaign of political warfare against the government’s ideological enemies, including human rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians.

The G-3 was entirely dedicated to monitoring public critics of the government. The group not only investigated the private lives of journalists and politicians, but it even intercepted the emails of Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of the international NGO Human Rights Watch, and followed the every move of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

Further, according to Semana, after the dissolution of the G-3, the same illegal practices were used to investigate members of Colombia’s Supreme Court, who have on several occasions stood strongly against the President on a number of issues.

The third and final element is violence. The scandal could not be called a ‘dirty war’ without the implication of violence and here, too, the DAS is guilty of abuses. Jose Miguel Narvaez, a former DAS subdirector and alleged architect of the G-3, has on at least three occasions been accused of strong links to paramilitary death squads. Top paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso has alleged that Narvaez gave a speech to paramilitaries entitled ‘Why it is legal to kill communists in Colombia.’

More:
http://colombiareports.com/opinion/111-colombiamerican/4998-colombias-dirty-war-chuzadas-and-the-future-of-the-das-.html