Victims of illegal wiretapping by Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS want leaked diplomatic cables to be used as evidence in cases against intelligence and government officials.
According to former Supreme Court Judge Julio Valencia Copete, one of the magistrates who was illegally shadowed by the DAS, he and other victims want the documents recently published by whistleblower website WikiLeaks to be included in the evidence against former directors of the DAS and aides to former President Alvaro Uribe.
The diplomatic cables revealed that Colombia’s national police commander General Oscar Naranjo personally suspected Uribe’s chief of staff Bernardo Moreno and the former president’s personal advisor Jose Obdulio Gaviria of having ordered the illegal wiretapping of Supreme Court magistrates, journalists, human rights workers and politicians.
Moreno’s defense attorney, Jaime Granados, said in a response that the cables are inadmissible as evidence. “As a law professor I want to explain that in Colombia no illegally obtained evidence is considered in a legal process,” the attorney told RCN Radio.
Moreno was recently barred from holding public office for 18 years by the inspector general, who considered it proven that the former chief of staff was involved in the scandal. Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office is conducting a criminal investigation against Moreno, Gaviria, former press secretary Cesar Mauricio Velasquez and three former DAS directors.
