The former head of Colombia’s National Security Agency, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for illegal wiretapping and monitoring telephone calls during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe. The scandal occurred between August 2007 and October 2008, when Hurtado served as director of the Department of Security, known as DAS, during the administration of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe.The Court also sentenced her colleague Bernardo Moreno, former Secretary General of the DAS to 8 years under house arrest for the same crime. Both had been found guilty earlier this year. Pilar Hurtado was not granted house arrest because she was a fugitive from justice from 2010 until 2015 in an effort to avoid prosecution. In January of this year, she finally turned herself in. After the sentences were announced, both officials were arrested. Colombia’s Supreme Court had formerly convicted and sentenced five other top officials, and is now calling for an investigation of Uribe himself for his role in organizing a spy ring that illegally intercepted the communications of his opponents. Natalia Margarita reports from Bogota for teleSUR.
