Panama reviewing more asylum requests from Colombian ex-officials

[Judi Lynn]

Panama reviewing more asylum requests from Colombian ex-officials
Friday, 17 December 2010 06:55 Adriaan Alsema

Panama President Ricardo Martinelli admitted Thursday that his country is reviewing several political asylum requests from Colombian former government officials who are being investigated for crimes in their country.

In an interview with CNN en Español, Martinelli claimed "not to remember" which former officials had requested political asylum, but said his government is reviewing their cases, several Colombian media reported.

RCN Radio talked to CNN journalist Juan Carlos Lopez, who said that the controversy caused by the political asylum granted to former intelligence chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado has delayed the other requests. According to Lopez, Martinelli considers the political asylums "an issue that could cause more problems in his country and, because of that, the other requests would have to wait."

Martinelli denied that Colombia's former president, and a personal friend, Alvaro Uribe had asked him to grant asylum to former aides and employees.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13441-panama-received-more-political-asylum-requests-by-colombian-former-officials-cnn.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. So Panama willbe re-named "New Miami," or "New Colombia." Great. n/t

[bemildred]

2. Well, it's an interesting development.

Suggests that there is change in the wind.

[Peace Patriot]

3. The political trouble this is causing for Martinelli is a measure of its importance...

...to those who want witnesses against Uribe out of Colombia and out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors. My guess is that the most interested party in all is the CIA's new Director Leon Panetta, a member of Daddy Bush's "Iraq Study Group" whom I suspect has been given the job of cleaning up after Junior. I think there is something going on behind the scenes regarding Junior authorizing war crimes in Colombia and that Uribe's silence has been bought with (among other things) protection against prosecution for his many crimes in Colombia--protection such as the CIA strong-arming Martinelli to grant the weird overnight asylum to Hurtado, the chief spying witness against Uribe, when such contempt for another Latin American country's justice system was bound to cause trouble for Martinelli, locally and regionally. It is BIG no-no in Latin America, where sovereignty is such an important and touchy issue. The region came down on Uribe like a ton of bricks when the U.S./Colombia bombed/raided on Ecuador's territory in March 2008. Even rightwing leaders condemned it.

The political peril to Martinelli was one of the things that alerted me to who might be the most interested party (besides, of course, Uribe himself), and how Martinelli could have been convinced (coerced? bludgeoned?) into doing this. Panama is a U.S. client state. Some leverage from that was probably used. I don't think Uribe could have pulled this off by himself. Uribe is the EX-president of Colombia. Martinelli doesn't owe him anything, that I know of (--although Uribe is certainly capable of issuing death threats). Martinelli is a rightwinger but I don't think he would do something this risky out of political sympathies alone.

Some seventy of Uribe's closest political cohorts, including family members, are under investigation or already in prison for bribery, spying, ties to the death squads, drug trafficking and other crimes. He was at the center of a lawless regime.

Last year, U.S./Bushwhack ambassador William Brownfield colluded with Uribe to extradite a number of death squad witnesses to the U.S., on mere drug trafficking charges, where they were buried in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by the complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure) in U.S. federal court in Washington DC. Around the same time, Brownfield and Uribe secretly negotiated a U.S./Colombia military agreement that (among other things) granted "total diplomatic immunity" to all U.S. military personnel and all U.S. military 'contractors' in Colombia.

This year, the U.S. State Department "fined" Blackwater (Xe) for "unauthorized" "trainings" of "foreign persons" (don't know who) IN COLOMBIA "for use in Iraq and Afghanistan." The word "unauthorized," if it is false, could hold the key to all of this--that is, Bush in fact authorized U.S. death squad activity in Colombia, Uribe knows about it and Panetta is covering it up.

Brownfield/Uribe get the death squad witnesses out of the country. They concoct a signed document giving all U.S. personnel/operatives "total diplomatic immunity." Panetta leans on Martinelli to get all the spying witnesses against Uribe out of the country, and arranges for Uribe to be appointed by the Obama administration to a prestigious international legal commission, and for cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard, to further launder Uribe's image and possibly to exhibit U.S. power to insult Colombian prosecutors and judges, at will.

Hurtado is the one who can nail Uribe for illegal domestic spying. She was the one Uribe would have given a direct order to. And the deed is done--she now has asylum, so maybe Martinelli (Uribe, CIA?) are cutting the others loose because they don't pose such a serious threat. I think that's what's in play here--the firestorm of criticism that Martinelli is in, vs. how important the other witnesses are to indicting Uribe. I'd guess that a lot of "cables" have been going back and forth between Panama and Washington this weekend, as they assess the damage to Martinelli vs the importance of the remaining spying witnesses who have fled to Panama and are asking for asylum, too.