COLOMBIA:
Interpol Notes Improper
Initial Handling of FARC
Laptops
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTÁ (IPS) -
Interpol reported
Thursday that the files
found on computers that
Colombia seized from a
FARC guerrilla camp in
March were not tampered
with and did belong to
the rebel group.
But it also said the
handling of the laptops
and hard drives in the
first 48 hours after
they were discovered
"may complicate
validating this evidence
for purposes of its
introduction in a
judicial proceeding".
The computers were found
in a FARC (Revolutionary
Armed Forces of
Colombia) camp two
kilometres inside the
Ecuadorean border, which
was targeted in a Mar. 1
aerial bombing by the
Colombian armed forces
that prompted Ecuador to
break off diplomatic
ties with that country.
The rebel group’s
international spokesman
Raúl Reyes and 25 other
people -- guerrillas as
well as Mexican students
-- were killed in the
late-night attack.
The three laptop
computers, two external
hard drives and three
USB memory sticks were
not damaged in the
bombing.
Interpol (the
international police)
said it reviewed 610
gigabytes of data,
including 37,872 written
documents, 452
spreadsheets, 210,888
images, 22,481 web
pages, 10,537 sound and
video files, and 7,989
email addresses. It also
decrypted 983 files,
which it handed over to
Colombia.
Because of doubts raised
when the Colombian
Defence Ministry leaked
bits and pieces of
information from the
FARC laptops to the
media, the government of
Álvaro Uribe handed them
over to Interpol on Mar.
10, to have them
authenticated.
The Interpol commission
was only tasked with
verifying whether
Colombia modified the
files and handled them
properly. It did not
analyse the content of
the documents.
In fact, the commission
was made up of forensic
experts from Australia
and Singapore who do not
speak or read Spanish,
"which helped to
eliminate the
possibility that they
might be influenced by
the content of any data
they were examining,"
according to the report.
Interpol
Secretary-General Ronald
Noble spoke to the press
about the agency’s
findings Thursday at the
Colombian Foreign
Ministry, and handed
Colombia a confidential
report.
HANDLING
The public report, which
is available over the
Internet and was
distributed to the
press, states that "no
data were created,
added, modified or
deleted on any of these
exhibits between 3 March
2008 at 11:45 a.m. and
10 March 2008, when the
exhibits were handed
over to Interpol’s
experts to make their
image disks."
During those few days,
the files were examined
by forensic computer
experts in the Colombian
National Police force,
the report says.
"Colombian law
enforcement authorities
have openly stated to
Interpol’s computer
forensic experts that an
officer in their
anti-terrorist unit
directly accessed the
eight seized FARC
computer exhibits under
exigent and
time-sensitive
circumstances between 1
March 2008, when they
were seized by Colombian
authorities, and 3 March
2008," the report adds.
"Using their forensic
tools, they (the
Interpol experts) found
a total of 48,055 files
for which the timestamps
indicated that they had
either been created,
accessed, modified or
deleted as a result of
the direct access to the
eight seized exhibits by
Colombian authorities
between the time of
their seizure on 1 March
2008 and 3 March 2008 at
11:45 a.m.
"The actual seizure of
the eight computer
exhibits occurred
between 5:50 a.m. and
7:50 a.m. (local time at
the place of seizure,
GMT -5:00) on Saturday,
1 March. However, it was
not until more than 48
hours later that the
eight seized exhibits
were given to the
computer forensic
specialists of the
Colombian Judicial
Police," the report goes
on to say.
"Access to the data
contained in the eight
FARC computer exhibits
between 1 March 2008,
when they were seized by
Colombian authorities,
and 3 March 2008 at
11:45 a.m., when they
were turned over to…the
Colombian Judicial
Police, did not conform
to internationally
recognised principles
for handling electronic
evidence by law
enforcement.
"When law enforcement
directly accesses seized
electronic evidence
without first making
physical images of the
data, such access leaves
traces of the relevant
law enforcement
officer’s accessing and
viewing of the evidence.
"Direct access may
complicate validating
this evidence for
purposes of its
introduction in a
judicial proceeding,
because law enforcement
is then required to
demonstrate or prove
that the direct access
did not have a material
impact on the purpose
for which the evidence
is intended," the report
adds.
After Noble spoke to the
press, Colombian
Attorney General Mario
Iguarán, who along with
Foreign Minister
Fernando Araújo was
summoned by Interpol as
a witness to the
delivery of the report,
said Colombia had
respected the chain of
custody of the evidence,
implying that it would
be valid in a court of
law.
THE CONTENT
The information leaked
to the press by
Colombian authorities
includes internal FARC
correspondence that
shows that the
guerrillas obtained
weapons on the black
market, apparently
through corrupt
Venezuelan military
personnel or officials
-- something that has
been occurring at least
since the mid-1990s.
The documents also
reveal intense
diplomatic and political
activity by the FARC,
considered a "terrorist"
group by Colombia,
Interpol, the European
Union and the United
States.
The exchanges of letters
and emails between
insurgents show that
Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez and the FARC
hushed up a Sept. 23,
2004 guerrilla attack on
Venezuelan troops around
20 km inside Venezuelan
territory. Five soldiers
and a 23-year-old woman
engineer who worked for
the state oil monopoly
PDVSA were killed in the
attack.
According to the
Colombian government,
the documents show that
Chávez has provided
financial and logistical
support for the FARC.
National Police chief
Óscar Naranjo said on
Mar. 2 that the
documents "not only show
close ties, but imply an
armed alliance between
the FARC and the
Venezuelan government."
But Adam Isaacson, a
Colombia specialist at
the Washington-based
Centre for International
Policy (CIP), pointed
out that "…the documents
in question are
communications between
guerrilla leaders.
Several offer accounts
of meetings with
officials of the
Venezuelan government,
some of them
high-ranking. No
documents or writings
from the Venezuelans
themselves appear; the
FARC communications only
reflect the guerrillas’
version of events."
The Uribe administration
also alleges that the
documents show ties
between the FARC and the
Ecuadorean government,
whose president, Rafael
Correa, reiterated this
week on a European tour
that his country "does
not border Colombia; it
borders the FARC."
The FARC controls an
estimated 35 percent of
Colombian territory,
mainly in rural,
sparsely populated areas
in the south.
When Organisation of
American States (OAS)
Secretary General José
Miguel Insulza testified
before the U.S. House
Subcommittee on Western
Hemispheric Affairs in
mid-April, he clearly
stated that there is "no
evidence" linking
Venezuela to the
Colombian guerrillas.
In an open letter issued
to the press on Apr. 26,
21 U.S. and British
academics who criticised
media coverage of the
laptop documents, said
that "there is no
evidence that the
publicly available
documents support any of
the extreme claims by
the Colombian government
that Venezuela and
Ecuador had any sort of
financial relationship
with the rebels."
"The authentication of
the laptops does not
mean the validation of
the Colombian
interpretation of their
contents," they stated,
adding that there is a
"gap between Colombia's
exaggerations and what
the documents actually
say." |
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