Colombia: Uribe settles scores with the press on air as new cases are filed

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Newswatch

Colombia: Uribe settles scores with the press on air as new cases are filed
Date published: December 6, 2010

Some 40 people – including Radio Nizkor journalist Claudia Julieta Duque – on November 30 filed complaints against former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe linked to his alleged responsibility in the “Dasgate” illegal phone-tapping, threats and sabotage laid at the door of the intelligence services. Uribe is due to appear before a special congressional committee which will allow him to escape more serious legal consequences.

This scandal that engulfed the Administration Department of Security (DAS) to which Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) devoted a mission report, has seen another new development with a case being brought, this time in Belgium on November 29, by a score of organisations, including the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and Oxfam Solidarity, and a number of individuals in connection with phone-tapping carried out in that country by Colombian intelligence.

RSF has offered its support to these plaintiffs and hopes that the Belgian justice system will be able to question the former president. "We believe that the scale of the activities carried out by the DAS, calls for an international investigation," it remarked.

Former DAS director, María del Pilar Hurtado, the chief potential witness to the former head of state’s involvement in the corruption of this top intelligence service, has just conveniently obtained political asylum in Panama. While denying discussing her asylum request with her, Uribe himself confirmed that he advised his close associates to seek asylum abroad in a long interview he gave yesterday to RCN radio, to among other questioners, his former vice-president and journalist by profession, Francisco Santos.



Read more: http://www.newswatch.in/newsblog/8351

[formercia]

1. Uribe gets handed a job at Georgetown

Georgetown welcomes Colombia's Uribe
by John Dear SJ on Sep. 07, 2010


Last week some of us learned that Georgetown University has appointed the former president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, to a teaching post at its Walsh School of Foreign Service. Uribe, who is linked to paramilitaries that slaughtered thousands of innocents and who befriended drug traffickers -- bringing them into the political mainstream -- has been named Georgetown's "Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership." He begins work tomorrow, Sept. 8.

Apparently neither the university president nor the faculty nor the Jesuits have been apprised that lawyers are working to bring charges against Uribe at The Hague for human rights violations. Georgetown might just as well have invited the Philippines' Marcos, Nicaragua's Somoza or Liberia's Charles Taylor to teach.

I shouldn't be surprised. Georgetown in particular has a long history of supporting U.S. war-making. It has taken millions from the Pentagon, trained thousands of young Catholics in its ROTC program, hired Henry Kissinger, welcomed the person who ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and supported war-makers from the Shah of Iran to Ronald Reagan.

--snip--

http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/georgetown-welcomes-colombias-uribe

Some of the Jesuits aren't too happy either.

[formercia]

2. K&R

Hey people! This is important too.