In-depth reports and analysis from our extensive network of correspondents throughout the region on the most important developments in Latin America. In today’s program we look at a scandal involving Colombia’s intelligence agency (DAS) that broke in February of 2009. A member of the Democratic Alternative Party tells us that the scandal was not limited to wiretapping. For eight years, he says, while Álvaro Uribe was President of the country, Colombia’s secret police known as DAS became a criminal apparatus to persecute Uribe’s opponents. A journalist tells us that tactics allegedly included wiretapping, threats, slander, and murder. Files contain instructions that illegally obtained information was to be delivered to the president himself. And the former head of Colombia’s Supreme Court says that at the same time, at least 60 Congressmen of Uribe’s party were found to be closely associated with paramilitary groups. “It was state terrorism directed from the presidential residence,” says the lawyer of some of the DAS victims. Investigators hope that Intelligence Director Maria de Pilar Hurtado, who recently turned herself in to the police, can provide information about who gave the orders to commit these crimes of state.
