Two Top Directors Leave Colombia's Secret Police as Scandal Mounts

[Judi Lynn]

Two Top Directors Leave Colombia's Secret Police as Scandal Mounts

By JUAN FORERO
Published: October 28, 2005
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Oct. 27 - The top two directors of Colombia's secret police were forced out this week as the government investigated allegations that the agency was mounting a money-making operation to sell intelligence and surveillance equipment to right-wing death squads.

The scandal at the agency, the Administrative Department of Security, comes as human rights groups and some legislators have exposed heightened paramilitary activity, including infiltrations of Congress and the attorney general's office. The paramilitaries also continue trafficking in cocaine, despite disarmament talks that underpin President Álvaro Uribe's effort to pacify Colombia with billions in American aid.

The 7,100-member intelligence agency has long been dogged by allegations that its agents have worked with paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, an illegal antiguerrilla organization that the State Department has branded a terrorist group. But the latest scandal has been especially explosive, coming amid international criticism that the government has been overly generous with paramilitaries who disarm by treating them leniently in prosecutions.
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The allegations are particularly grave because they add to a string of revelations of paramilitary influence in everything from local governments and the health care system to provincial lotteries. Indeed, a former official at the intelligence agency, Rafael García, has been under investigation for having erased computerized case files containing information on paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/americas/28colombia.html

[bemildred]

1. Gosh, you mean "Plan Colombia" was a sham all the time?

:puke: