Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Monday he will not allow
anyone to “touch” former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos following
the order to arrest the ex minister by an Ecuadorean court.
“I received the news of a foreign judge and the decision against Minister Santos. The Colombian government will not allow them to touch Minister Santos,” Uribe said in a response.
Interior and Justice Minister Fabio Valencia Cossio said that Colombia will appeal the ruling before international judicial bodies, saying the verdict is arbitrary.
“No military action against a terrorist act can be considered illegitimate. According to this concept, this clearly is abuse of the Ecuadorean judge, that obviously has no judicial reason,” the Minister said.
Juan Manuel Santos himself, currently in the UK, qualified the arrest warrant as “absurd” and said the arrest warrant was not so much for him, but for Colombia as a country.
Ecuadorean judge Daniel Mendez said that then-Defense Minister Santos was responsible for
the operation in which 25, including FARC commander ‘Raul Reyes’ and Ecuadorean
citizen Franklin Aisalla died.
The Ecuadorean Prosecutor
General said that Santos was responsible for these deaths and will be
investigated for murder and for violating Ecuadorean sovereignty.
Colombia’s incursion onto Ecuadorean land led to strained relations between the two countries.
The Organization of American States previously ruled that the incursion was violation of Ecuadorean sovereignty.
