Colombia’s military released alleged intelligence documents claiming that a victim of former President Alvaro Uribe’s alleged fraud and bribery practices is a former FARC guerrilla.
The allegations were published by weekly Semana after a Bogota judge granted the request of Deyanira Gomez to be considered a victim of Uribe’s alleged criminal practices.
Gomez is the ex-girlfriend of Guillermo Monsalve, one of the surviving former members of the “Bloque Metro” who have testified that the far-right former president helped found the the paramilitary group.
The victim fled Colombia in 2019 after a Supreme Court investigation against the former president triggered intimidation attempts against Gomez and her children.
Who is killing witnesses against Colombia’s former president?
Criminalizing a victim
Juan Guillermo Monsalve
According to Semana, military intelligence documents from 2006 and 2007 claimed that Monsalve’s ex-girlfriend was a “medic of the FARC’s criminal structures in the provinces of Tolima and Cundinamarca.”
The military claims were never confirmed by the prosecution, which never investigated Gomez’s alleged ties to the FARC.
The nurse also never registered to demobilize with the former guerrilla group, which would have exempted her from criminal prosecution as part of a 2016 peace deal.
The magazine has repeatedly tried to discredit the victims of Uribe’s allegedly criminal attempts to prevent investigations into the former president’s alleged ties to the paramilitary group.
The military apparently is now also trying to discredit victims in the case by releasing baseless accusations.
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Uribe’s disappointing luck with justice
Prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes (Screenshot: YouTube)
Controversial prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes asked Bogota judge Carmen Helena Ortiz not to pursue criminal charges against Uribe, but so far without luck.
Instead of granting the prosecution’s request, Ortiz granted Gomez provisional victim status and barred the prosecution from suppressing evidence of the former president’s alleged criminal activity gathered by the Supreme Court.
The high court in February 2018 opened an investigation against Uribe for allegedly bribing witnesses to file bogus charges against opposition Senator Ivan Cepeda in 2014.
The Supreme Court forwarded this investigation to the prosecution in August last year after the former president resigned from Senate and renounced his congressional privileges.
The victims of Uribe’s alleged fraud and bribery practices oppose the prosecution’s request to stop investigating the former president.
