[R-G] INTERPOL Clarifies it Never Determined Authenticity of Laptops that Implicate Venezuela

[Anthony Fenton]

INTERPOL Clarifies it Never Determined Authenticity of Laptops that  
Implicate Venezuela
June 12th 2008, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, June 12, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Representatives of the  
International Police Organization (Interpol) told Ecuadorian  
Presidential Adviser Fernando Bustamante in a meeting last week that  
its investigation of laptop computers which Colombia claims belonged  
to the FARC “does not determine if the computers provided were found  
in the guerrilla camp of the FARC during the incursion on March 1st,  
if they effectively belonged to Raúl Reyes, and even less so their  
contents,” according to a recent missive released by the Ecuadorian  
Foreign Relations Ministry.

Bustamante, the chief advisor to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa,  
met with INTERPOL representatives last Tuesday during a United Nations  
conference in New York. At the meeting, INTERPOL “confirmed that their  
forensic informational analysis does not imply the validity or the  
exactitude of the user files that [the computers] contain,” the  
Ecuadorian government disclosed.

Today, Venezuela’s Vice-President, Ramón Carrizalez, echoed  
Bustamante’s evaluation when he said about the computer files, “This  
is an information that no serious person can validate. Anyone who  
knows how to read and write and who has some common sense will notice  
that these are proofs that cannot be used anywhere in the world.”

The Colombian government claims the files prove that Venezuela  
financed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and that  
Ecuador provided refuge for the insurgents. Colombia also claims to  
have found the computers in the wreckage of a FARC camp inside Ecuador  
that the Colombian armed forces bombarded last March 1st, killing FARC  
second-in-command Raúl Reyes, to whom Colombia says the computers  
belonged.

INTERPOL clarified to Bustamante that the report was an act of  
“independent technical assistance” and that it only confirmed that  
after March 3rd, Colombia complied with international standards for  
the treatment of evidence. Proper handling of the evidence could not  
be determined for the period between the attack and March 3rd.

“Between March 1st and 3rd... there are no indications that user files  
have been created, modified, or eliminated, but neither is there  
evidence that demonstrates that this has not been done,” INTERPOL told  
Bustamante.

Based on this clarification, the Ecuadorian government reiterated  
Tuesday its “position of not granting any legal validity to the  
information found in the computers supposedly belonging to Raúl  
Reyes.” Ecuadorian Foreign Relations Minister María Isabel Salvador  
previously set this policy in mid-May when the INTERPOL report was  
first released.

The Ecuadorian government also reiterated its concern over Colombia’s  
manipulation of the results of INTERPOL’s report to make it look like  
the report proved the accusations against Venezuela and Ecuador, a  
falsity that has been perpetuated by the mainstream international media.

Bustamante suggested that Ecuador should have been allowed to  
participate in the investigation, to which the INTERPOL delegates  
replied that Ronald Noble, the General Secretary of INTERPOL, would be  
willing to visit Ecuador to discuss the details of the report.

Meanwhile, President Correa echoed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s  
recent call for the liberation of all FARC hostages yesterday after  
meeting with the father of a Colombian soldier who has been held  
prisoner by the FARC for 10 years.

Correa also asserted that Ecuador “is not going to ask anybody’s  
permission [to continue with] the humanitarian action that is  
incomplete,” referring to the process of humanitarian hostage releases  
underway before Colombia’s March 1st attack, which ended the  
humanitarian exchange.

FARC: Uribe is Planning to Assassinate Chavez

FARC leader Iván Márquez, who had met with Chávez to discuss hostage  
release last year, alleged in a communiqué last weekend that President  
Uribe “attempted and continues trying to kill” Chávez and Correa with  
the help of the United States.

The Colombian Department of Security Administration (DAS) has already  
infiltrated Caracas with 100 paramilitary forces to assassinate  
Chávez, and a similar plan exists for Correa, Márquez alleged.

In the statement, Márquez also railed that the laptops examined by  
INTERPOL are fake and used by Uribe to threaten neighbors and to cover  
up the political scandal in Colombia in which Uribe allies have  
recently been convicted of contracting paramilitaries to perform  
politically motivated assassinations.

Ecuador and Colombia expressed their willingness to renew diplomatic  
relations last Friday with arbitration by former U.S. President Jimmy  
Carter’s Carter Center, which commented that both presidents were open  
to “the possibility of immediately re-establishing diplomatic  
relations between both governments without preconditions.”