Colombian Prosecutors Probe
Illegal Wiretap scandal
Bogota - Colombian state prosecutors swooped on headquarters of the
national intelligence agency on Sunday to probe charges that rogue
agents illegally wiretapped politicians and judges as a paid favor
to drug traffickers.
The telephone bugging accusations are the latest scandal to rock the
state security agency, known as DAS, and could further stain
President Alvaro Uribe's campaign to stamp out corruption of state
law enforcement in the world's top cocaine supplier.
"I have ordered a probe of the DAS interception systems and
controls," Attorney General Mario Iguaran told reporters. "If
necessary, because the seriousness of this case, we could suspend
operations in the DAS interception rooms."
The latest accusations were first made by the news magazine Semana
in a report on DAS agents intercepting the phone calls of well-known
journalists, politicians and magistrates to sell information to drug
traffickers and armed gangs.
Uribe, a strong ally of the United States, has received billions of
dollars in aid from Washington to help his fight against drug
traffickers and leftist guerrillas. Violence, bombings and
kidnappings from Colombia's four-decade conflict have declined
sharply.
But officials in the armed forces and police agents are still often
accused of taking bribes from drug lords. The justice minister's
brother, a prosecutor in Medellin, was arrested last year in a probe
into suspected ties to drug traffickers.
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told local radio the
intelligence agents were likely in the pay of drug smugglers, but
opposition leaders questioned those claims, saying Uribe's
administration would benefit most from the recordings.
The new scandal came to light just four months after the former
intelligence director quit after admitting agents had spied on
opponents of Uribe, a hard-liner popular for his crackdown on the
rebel group known as FARC.
Felipe Munoz, the new director of the DAS agency, said an elite team
would probe the case to establish if there is a mafioso-type network
trying to strike at national security.
In 2007, Uribe fired his senior police chiefs after an illegal
wiretapping scandal that fueled worries about intelligence practices
in the Andean country. A former director has also been under
investigation for ties to paramilitary death squads. |
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