'Uribe ordered Colombia's VP to appoint terrorist group's ideologue'

[Judi Lynn]

Jose Miguel Narvaez (Image: RCN Radio)

by Adriaan Alsema June 25, 2020

Former President Alvaro Uribe allegedly ordered Colombia’s vice-president to appoint an ideologue of what the US government considered a terrorist organization a top government position.

Jose Miguel Narvaez told the Supreme Court he joined Uribe’s 2002 government formation team despite being the ideologue of the AUC, a paramilitary organization designated a terrorist group by the US government the year before.

This government formation team was led by Fabio Echeverri, a close ally of Uribe and the father of Luis Guillermo Echeverri, a close friend of President Ivan Duque.

Before taking office in August 2002, Uribe ordered Vice-President Marta Lucia Ramirez to hire Narvaez as her personal advisor at the Defense Ministry, court documents released by news website Minuto 30 show.

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Google translation from Las Orillas:

José Miguel Narváez the DAS man who spoke to Carlos Castaño in his ear
He came to his Las Tangas farm with the list of those who had to kill. A judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison for the murder of Jaime Garzón

By: Iván Gallo | August 12, 2015



Three days before he was killed, Jaime Garzón entered the Modelo prison in Bogotá to meet with paramilitary chief Ángel Custodio Gaitán. The reason for the interview was to beg for his life since the journalist was certain that he had entered Carlos Castaño's blacklist. Gaitán did not give him false hopes and told him abruptly that stopping that order was very difficult; the pattern was like God, what he said, he fulfilled it.

On August 13, 1999, at 5:45 in the morning, Jaime Garzón realized that his fears were not unfounded: two hitmen belonging to the La Terraza gang, previously hired by Carlos Castaño, shot him at the last stoplight. separated from its destination, the offices of the Radionet station. DAS officials quickly arrived at the crime scene to prepare the sainete: they hired a neighbor from the place, named María Amparo Arroyabe, who pointed out Juan Pablo Ortiz Agudelo alias Bochas and Edilberto Antonio Sierras, two small-time criminals who would now have to go to jail and be the object of national repudiation for a crime they did not commit.

The country knew that Garzón was going to be killed by the self-defense groups. Not only his television jokes, which enraged Carlos Castaño and the rarefied military leadership of the time, but the humanitarian management that he was carrying out with the government of Cundinamarca for the liberation of kidnapped in the power of the ELN, a work much more effective than the crude attempts Made by the Gaula or the Army to rescue the hostages, and General Mora Rangel's irresponsible hints that the humorist was a guerrilla sympathizer, they were facts that made him too visible a target.

The idea of ​​killing him had emerged a year ago, in 1998. At that time, the paramilitary project was beginning to prevail in Colombia with the approval of high-ranking state officials and army generals. The idea was not only to physically prepare the combatants to face their red rivals, but also ideologically. One of the most outstanding teachers in this field was José Miguel Narváez, a tough, studied and convincing instructor from the Escuela Superior de Guerra, who earned the respect and admiration of the paramilitary chiefs for his chair entitled Why is it legal to kill communists? In colombia?

Classes were held between a relaxed and festive atmosphere in Urabá, on the farms La Veintiuno and La Quince, both owned by Carlos Castaño. Amalfi's illustrious son loved the erudition with which he handled the subject of the anti-communist struggle. So, one day before the talk began, he ordered steers to be killed and he made a roast pantagruélico in order to entertain his master. They even said that this reserve officer had an office right there, on the La Twenty-one farm, at the disposal of his friends, the Paracos.

To the meetings that took place in these farms, Narváez almost always carried a sheet of paper with the profiles of the probable insurgents that Castaño should take out of the way. The files of Álvaro Leyva Durán, Wilson Borja, Manuel Cepeda Vargas, Piedad Córdoba and Jaime Garzón came into his hands. On killing the latter, doubts arose for the Paramilitary chief. He was a public figure, loved by all Colombians. Although El fantasma hated the program in which Garzón joked and joked denounced the atrocities that the paramilitary project was beginning to perpetrate throughout the national territory, he was still an innocent humorist.

. . .

Three days before his death, Jaime learns that he is going to be killed. In addition to going to the Modelo prison to speak with Custodio Gaitán, he communicates with the then Minister of Defense, Rafael Pardo, searches, unsuccessfully, for General Jorge Enrique Mora and manages to speak with Rito Alejo del Río. Garzón knew which were the military that supported the paramilitary cause and yet he could do nothing to save himself.

Apparently Castaño regretted this death and as a result of it he ceased to trust Narváez's suggestions and advice. DAS did its part and diverted the investigation with its false witnesses and its long-standing suspects. For José Miguel Narváez this was not the beginning of the end; on the contrary, it was the beginning of a dizzying ascent.

. . .

Shortly before Andrés Pastrana handed over his presidency, Narváez would become an advisor to the Ministry of Defense, a position in which he would not last long because of a call interception scandal. Thanks to his friendships, this man managed to fall while standing; Ex-director of the DAS Jorge Noguera Cote tells that one of the first orders that Álvaro Uribe Vélez gave, when sitting in the solitude of Bolívar, was to appoint Narváez as deputy director of intelligence of the DAS despite his extensive record. There, he was again linked to irregularities such as the scandal of the persecutions and telephone bullets against government opponents, a crime for which he was arrested in late 2010.

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The comedian's death coincided with a change in the country's power structures: the traditional ruling class would make way for paramilitarism. It did not take a coup d'état, but rather the co-opting of votes, the rigging of some senators, the timely delivery of a ticket envelope or a threat. In this change of skin, the murderous bullets threw intellectuals and social activists of the stature of Eduardo Umaña Mendoza, Mario Calderón, José María Valle, Darío Betancourt, Elsa Alvarado and so many other journalists, politicians and thinkers who no longer fit. in the country model that was making its way.

Jaime's was the most painful homicide because we all knew him. Knowing who his murderers were will help to lessen the pain that seems eternal. The fact that this crime does not go unpunished will undoubtedly help the final reconciliation.

https://www.las2orillas.co/la-catedra-anticomunista-de-los-paras-determino-el-asesinato-de-jaime-garzon/

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Jaime Garzón's car, where it was attacked by sicaros.







He was known to wrap himself in the flag.



People standing at one of the memorials for Jaime Garzón. Some of the men have shoe shine kits in memory of one of his famous recurring TV skit in which he would play the part of a shoe shine man in whose chair various famous Colombian people would sit for dialogue.



One of the memorials.
The Bogotá Post:
"Jaime Garzón: The day the laughter stopped"









All this because the fascist government didn't like him. Quite the waste, wasn't it?

The whole country loved him, except for the monsters.