[R-G] It is not only Chávez who has links to guerrilla

[Anthony Fenton]

It is not only Chávez who has links to guerrillas

Uribe's dealings with rightwing paramilitaries remains an untold  
story, says Andy Higginbottom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/03/venezuela.colombia
     * Andy Higginbottom
     * The Guardian,
     * Tuesday June 3 2008

Your report on the find by Colombian security forces diverts attention  
from the mounting evidence of President Álvaro Uribe's own links with  
rightwing paramilitary death squads (Laptop emails link Chávez to  
guerrillas, May 16).

The article states that Interpol "announced that a two-month forensic  
investigation of the laptops seized in a raid by Colombian security  
forces concluded they belonged to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of  
Colombia (Farc)".

None of the findings in Interpol's report "conclude" any such thing,  
as in conclude after an investigation. The two Interpol investigators  
are computer experts: neither speaks Spanish, and they were tasked  
solely with inspecting the kit. Interpol assumes that the equipment it  
inspected was indeed used by Farc, it did not investigate the  
circumstances of their seizure, when the Colombian army killed 25  
guerrillas in its raid into Ecuador on March 1. Are the Colombian  
security services to be trusted?

It is they who presumably sourced the article's claim that: "Leaks  
from the trove of 16,000 files and photographs have suggested high- 
ranking Venezuelan officials plotted to help the Marxist group to  
obtain weapons and funding."

Your article is more remarkable for the story it did not tell, also  
involving computers. In the early hours of May 13 Uribe extradited 14  
leaders of the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia from its  
custody to penitentiaries in the US. This manoeuvre leaves in tatters  
any justice component of the government's own "justice and peace"  
process. Despite admitting the murder of more than 4,000 people, the  
"para" leaders have been extradited on drugs charges, not human rights  
violations, for which they may never stand trial.

In the course of this sudden extradition, top paramilitary Salvatore  
Mancuso's computer and the hard drives used by four other leaders have  
disappeared from Itagüí maximum security prison. One drive was used by  
"Tuso Sierra", known to have business dealings with the former senator  
Mario Uribe, President Uribe's cousin and lifelong political ally.

With no less than 96 Uribe supporters in the country's congress being  
held in detention or under investigation for links with the  
paramilitaries, this latest manoeuvre adds to the suspicion that Uribe  
himself enjoys impunity at home and in the US. International press  
investigation of the allegations is thus vitally important, but still  
woefully absent.

Uribe and Chávez exemplify the two social models competing for the  
continent's future: neoconservatism versus "socialism of the 21st  
century". The Andean region is split. Like Uribe, Peru's Alan García  
is eager to strike a free trade and investment deal with the European  
Union, while Ecuador and Bolivia, like Venezuela, will not accept the  
EU's privatisation terms.

In Lima this month I joined 8,000 participants from indigenous  
peoples' groups, environmental organisations and social movements - at  
the "people's summit"; we rejected the primacy of corporate interests  
in the relationship between our two continents. We would all  
appreciate a better informed reporting of these inspirational  
developments rather than mere snapping at Chávez.

· Dr Andy Higginbottom is a senior lecturer at Kingston University and  
is secretary of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign a.higginbottom at kingston.ac.uk