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It says:
Colombia's Supreme Court earlier absolved Piedad Cordoba and other suspects of "FARC-politics" after dismissing evidence coming from the Reyes computers, allegedly found after the bombing of Reyes' Ecuadorean camp that killed the FARC's "foreign minister" and more than 20 others.
According to Ordoñez, evidence additional to the Reyes files provide enough evidence to prove that the dissident senator "collaborated with the FARC," which was the reason to dmismiss her and bar her from holding public office for 18 years. --from the OP
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The government charges Cordoba using false evidence; the Supreme Court absolves her--and the government gets to say, "oh, oops! we have this OTHER evidence," to deprive her of her senate seat and ban her for 18 years?
Sounds like a railroading to me, and an ominous one.
Piedad Cordoba has advocated for peace in Colombia's 70 year civil war, something that U.S. and Colombian war profiteers very much don't want, since this civil war has been much a convenient excuse for bilking U.S. taxpayers of at least $7 BILLION in military aid and for slaughtering thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, political leftists, teachers, community activists, journalists, peasant farmers, peace advocates and other inconvenient persons.
Since you credit me with a "good call" (that there were no emails)--although I didn't really "call" it, I was merely stating fact from investigative reports--I will make another "call."
Uribe's request to Chavez (and to Cordoba) to negotiate with the FARC for hostage releases was a set-up.
In 2007, Alvaro Uribe ENTICED Hugo Chavez, Piedad Cordoba and others into negotiating with the FARC for hostage releases, and they agreed to do it because they believed that hostage releases would lead to a peace settlement in this dreadful, long civil war. Uribe's request to Chavez was made in public. Chavez proceeded to contact the FARC and, when he was on the point of success, a few days before the first two Chavez-negotiated hostage releases were about to occur, Uribe suddenly rescinded the request, using a quite flimsy excuse*. But the hostage releases were in progress, and the hostages' families and all sorts of other people--the president of France, human rights groups--begged Chavez to continue his efforts. The Colombian military then FIRED UPON the first two hostages, as they were in route to their freedom, driving them back on a 20 mile hike into the jungle. Chavez later got them and four others out by different routes, but he had to stop these negotiations--despite on-going pleas from around the world--because it was too dangerous for the hostages.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the above sequence of events is that, on the very day that the first two hostages were fired upon, 12/1/07, Donald Rumseld published an op-ed in the Washington Post stating, in the first paragraph, that Hugo Chavez's help in getting hostage releases "is not welcome in Colombia," though it had been just days before (when Uribe suddenly rescinded his request). It was almost as if Uribe was a puppet on a string, and his string got pulled.
They had not meant Chavez to be successful. They had meant to hand Chavez a diplomatic disaster, with dead hostages.
That's my "call" on this one. And here's my "call" on what happened next.
Uribe's request to Chavez (and to Cordoba, who was also authorized to contact the FARC for hostage release negotiations) was ALL ALONG an effort to create a record of Chavez/Cordoba contacts with the FARC that could be used against them later.
FARC commander Raul Reyes wanted to end the civil war. That's why he was taking such risks in releasing hostages. He continued the effort. He moved to a temporary camp just inside Ecuador's border and was about to release Ingrid Betancourt (French-Colombian citizen) and others, in his best gamble for peace, when the U.S./Colombia dropped 500 lb U.S. "smart bombs" on his camp, killing him and 24 other sleeping people--an act that nearly started a war between the U.S./Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, and ENDED ALL HOPE FOR PEACE in Colombia's civil war.
And the next thing we knew, Uribe and the Colombian military were claiming to have retrieved Reyes' laptop computer from the bombed out campsite and in it were "emails" 'proving' that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa and others were "terrorist lovers." The "evidence" was so ridiculous and the charges were so wild (that they were helping the FARC obtain a "dirty bomb," etc.), and the provenance of the laptop (later, laptopS) was so compromised that the whole thing was thoroughly debunked. But that didn't stop Alvaro Uribe from continuing to use the debunked laptop 'evidence' for slander and propaganda, even to his last days in office, recently (and his wild allegations against Chavez at the OAS about "harboring" FARC guerrillas in Venezuela--which nobody believed and which the new president, Manuel Santos, withdrew).
A plot worthy of Donald Rumsfeld and his "Office of Special Plans," I must say--and possibly one originally designed to trigger a war.
These fascist, war profiteer forces can't get at Chavez and, until recently (the police coup?), couldn't get at Rafael Correa. But Senator Cordoba is Colombian, and can be easily gotten at. And that is what is going down. She is no "terrorist lover." She is a peace advocate and a victim of rightwing terrorists in her own country, recipient of death threats from Colombia's notorious rightwing paramiltary groups, and now her own government has put her in additional danger by depriving her of her senate seat and the protections of a public official.
I'm going to "call" this one an attempt to get her killed. It is not just a silencing. It is a plain threat to her life. They couldn't put her in jail. The Supreme Court threw their case out. But that isn't the end of fascist treachery in Colombia. They have "other means" of "removing" opponents of fascism and war--as all the dead bodies of trade unionists, human rights workers, peace advocates and others in Colombia silently attest.
There was a peace demonstration in Colombia not long ago. Afterward, the leaders of the demonstration were picked off, one by one, near their homes, on the street, wherever they were, with bullets through the head.
There has been no accountability for the wanton rightwing death squad and Colombian military murders of thousands of innocent people--people merely trying to exercise their right to form a union or their right of dissent, or doing nothing at all--young people kidnapped and murdered in the "false positives" horrors. Something like 95% of these murders go unsolved. Yet this Inspector General has time to harass a peace advocate and deprive her of her office?
This is a BAD omen for the post-Uribe government of Manuel Santos.
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*(The excuse that Uribe used to rescind his request to Chavez, days before the first hostage releases, was that Chavez had contacted someone in the Colombian military. Why this sensible action would be an offense, I don't know. If you were Chavez, would you proceed with such a mission without trying to get assurances from the Colombian military? If I remember correctly, that phone call was made by Senator Piedad Cordoba (on Chavez's behalf). It was very likely done to try to insure the safety of the hostages. It is also very likely that, if Uribe put a condition on Chavez that he NOT contact the Colombian military, this was intended to prevent Chavez from finding out that the Colombian military was going to fire upon the hostages' position. Chavez then enlisted Senator Cordoba's help in trying to find out if the hostages would be safe. But apparently a secret decision had gone forward to shoot at the hostages, and Cordoba's contact in the military either didn't know this or lied to her. The press conference called by the first two hostages--the ones who had to flee--after Chavez finally got them out, was ignored by the corpo-fascist media. It was never reported that the Colombian military fired upon them. Nor did Donald Rumsfeld, in his 12/1/07 statement that Chavez's help "is not welcome in Colombia," admit that Uribe had publicly requested Chavez's help. It would be the height of foolishness to expect the truth from Donald Rumsfeld, but I continue to be shocked by the news media's collusion in the nefarious aspects of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, which continues to this day.)
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