Venezuela Still Aids Colombia Rebels, New
Material Shows
Caracas - Despite repeated denials by
President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan officials
have continued to assist commanders of
Colombia’s largest rebel group, helping them
arrange weapons deals in Venezuela and even
obtain identity cards to move with ease on
Venezuelan soil, according to computer
material captured from the rebels in recent
months and under review by Western
intelligence agencies.
New evidence points to collaborations
between members of the Venezuelan government
and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC. A Colombian soldier
inspected the area after an aerial
bombardment against the FARC in July.
The materials point to detailed
collaborations between the guerrillas and
high-ranking military and intelligence
officials in Mr. Chávez’s government as
recently as several weeks ago, countering
the president’s frequent statements that his
administration does not assist the rebels.
“We do not protect them,” he said in late
July.
The new evidence — drawn from computer
material captured from the rebel group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC — comes at a low point for ties between
Venezuela and Colombia. Mr. Chávez froze
diplomatic relations in late July, chafing
at assertions by Colombia’s government that
Swedish rocket launchers sold to Venezuela
ended up in the hands of the FARC.
Venezuela’s reaction was also fueled by
Colombia’s plans to increase American troop
levels there.
“Colombia’s government is trying to build a
case in the media against our country that
serves its own political agenda,” said
Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela’s ambassador in
Washington, describing the latest
intelligence information as “noncorroborated.”
Mr. Chávez has disputed claims of his
government’s collaboration with the rebels
since Colombian forces raided a FARC
encampment in Ecuador last year. During the
raid, Colombian commandos obtained the
computers of a FARC commander with encrypted
e-mail messages that described a history of
close ties between Mr. Chávez’s government
and the rebel group, which has long crossed
over into Venezuelan territory for refuge.
The newest communications, circulated among
the seven members of the FARC’s secretariat,
suggest that little has changed with
Venezuela’s assistance since the raid. The
New York Times obtained a copy of the
computer material from an intelligence
agency that is analyzing it.
One message from Iván Márquez, a rebel
commander thought to operate largely from
Venezuelan territory, describes the FARC’s
plan to buy surface-to-air missiles, sniper
rifles and radios in Venezuela last year.
It is not clear whether the arms Mr. Márquez
refers to ended up in FARC hands. But he
wrote that the effort was facilitated by
Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the director of
Venezuela’s police intelligence agency until
his removal last month, and by Ramón
Rodríguez Chacín, a former Venezuelan
interior minister who served as Mr. Chávez’s
official emissary to the FARC in
negotiations to free hostages last year.
In the message, Mr. Márquez discusses a plan
by Mr. Rodríguez Chacín to carry out the
deal near the Río Negro in Amazonas State in
Venezuela. Mr. Márquez goes further,
explaining that General Rangel Silva gave
the arms dealers documents they could use to
move around freely while in Venezuela.
Intelligence of this kind has been a source
of tension between Colombia and Venezuela,
with the government here claiming the
information is false and used to further
political ends. Colombian officials, by
contrast, argue that the intelligence proves
that the FARC survives in part on its
ability to operate from Venezuela’s frontier
regions.
The latest evidence, suggesting that the
FARC operates easily in Venezuela, may put
the Obama administration in a tough spot.
President Obama has recently tried to repair
Washington’s relations with Venezuela,
adopting a nonconfrontational approach to
Mr. Chávez that stands in contrast to the
Bush administration’s often aggressive
response to his taunts and insults.
But the United States and the European Union
still classify the FARC as a terrorist
organization. The Treasury Department
accused General Rangel Silva and Mr.
Rodríguez Chacín last year of assisting the
FARC’s drug trafficking activities, opening
the officials to freezes on their assets,
fines and prison terms of up to 30 years in
the United States. Venezuela has said the
men are not guilty of those charges.
“We do not comment on intelligence matters,”
said Noel Clay, a State Department
spokesman, in relation to the latest
captured communications. A spokesman from
the Colombian Foreign Ministry declined to
comment on the matter.
Computer records obtained in the Colombian
raid in Ecuador last year appeared to
corroborate the assertion that Venezuela
helped the FARC acquire the Swedish-made
rocket launchers at the heart of the latest
diplomatic dispute between the two
countries. The launchers were purchased by
the Venezuelan Army in the late 1980s but
captured in Colombia in combat operations
against the FARC last year.
The FARC’s use of Swedish arms has an added
dimension: the rebels kidnapped a Swedish
engineer in Colombia in 2007, holding him
hostage for nearly two years — during which
he was reported to have suffered brain
damage and paralysis from a stroke — before
releasing him in March.
“The issue of these weapons is extremely
serious for us,” said Tommy Stromberg, the
political officer at the Swedish Embassy in
Bogotá, the Colombian capital, which also
oversees Sweden’s affairs in Venezuela. Mr.
Stromberg said Venezuela had bought Swedish
arms as recently as 2006. “We have asked
Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry for
clarification on how this happened, but have
not had a response.”
The computer records from the raid in
Ecuador last year also seem to match some of
the information in the new communications
under review by Western intelligence
officials.
For example, a message obtained in the
Ecuador raid and written in September 2007
contained an earlier reference to the arms
deal discussed recently by the FARC. In the
earlier message, Mr. Márquez, the rebel
commander, referred to dealers he described
as Australian, and went into detail about
the arms they were selling, including
Dragunov rifles, SA-7 missiles and HF-90M
radios, the same items he discusses in the
more recent communications.
Another file from the Ecuador raid
mentioning an offer from the FARC to
instruct Venezuelan officers in guerrilla
warfare matches recently obtained material
from a rebel commander, Timoleón Jiménez,
that says the course took place. Other
communications refer to FARC efforts to
secure Venezuelan identity cards in a plan
overseen by General Rangel Silva, the former
Venezuelan intelligence chief.
In other material captured as recently as
May, Mr. Márquez, the rebel commander, said
Mr. Chávez had spoken personally with Mr.
Jiménez, expressing solidarity for the
FARC’s struggle. Then Mr. Márquez went into
more mundane matters, referring to
unspecified problems the FARC had recently
encountered in La Fría, an area in Venezuela
near the border with Colombia.
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