The snowball is just beginning to roll. In the midst of a new scandal for the espionage that shakes Colombia, the office of the Prosecutor launched on Monday a formal investigation into the unlawful interceptions by judges, opposition politicians and journalists by military men that they met this weekend. The prosecutor-general manager, Fabio Espitía, also asked the office of the prosecutor delegate before the Supreme Court of Justice –in charge of some public servants with jurisdiction– to open an investigation against the general Nicacio Martinez, questioned excomandante of the Army who resigned in December citing family reasons.
“it Is a information that the Prosecution did not have, is information that is known by the media,” said Espitía to announce the inquiry at a press conference at about noon this Monday. According to the allegations of Semana magazine, the departure of Martinez on the 27th of December came with the new phone hacking scandal, known colloquially in Colombia as chuzadas, which was ordained and made from military installations. This was “a way of blindarlas and avoid a raid surprise of the justice or the snooping of the media”, according to the report. The officers, who over the past year, provided information to the press about various facts of corruption of the armed forces, were also targets of surveillance, according to the report titled “Chuzadas without mercy”, which has caused a political earthquake in the andean country.
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During the year he was in office, Martinez was harshly questioned for his role in the return of the ghost of the so-called “false positives” –extrajudicial executions of civilians presented as combat casualty–. In a statement released Monday the newspaper El Tiempo, the former chief of the Army, in its first reaction after the publication, says that his “dignity and good name may not be trampled in an irresponsible way”. He says that his retirement was caused by a personal decision and announces that it will exhaust “the resources and legal instances that are necessary to come to public light the truth about the unjust accusations to which I have been subjected”.
After giving this information, the president Iván Duque took away from the scandal. The Executive said that they were unaware of those actions and called for penalties for those responsible. “Found that there were irregularities, the Government requires that those responsible are punished in an exemplary manner”, said the minister of Defense, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, in a press conference in which he was accompanied by the commanders of the Military Forces, general Luis Fernando Navarro, and of the Army, general Eduardo Zapateiro, the release of Nicacio Martinez.
“Now, it is time to move forward in the elucidation of the truth (…) and that truth, which is administrative in nature, disciplinary, criminal, or fiscal, will be achieved through the research that should advance the competent entities,” stressed Trujillo, an experienced politician and diplomat of the Democratic Center, the party of Government. The former foreign assumed the portfolio of Defence in November after the departure of Guillermo Botero, faced with an impending motion of no confidence in the Congress. Newcomer to the charge ordered an audit of the appliance of intelligence, but was unaware of the complaints in a timely, assured.
According to the weekly newspaper, one of the military sources involved received the order that the information obtained through the follow-up to the magistrate Cristina Lombana had as a recipient to a “recognized politician of the Democratic Center”, the party founded by the senator and former president Alvaro Uribe, a political mentor of president Duke. Questioned about whether the Government knew the name of that political, Trujillo said that “the only thing that is known is the writing of the magazine Week. The circumstances, the names, the facts, the conditions of mode, time and place that is allegedly produced those wrongful acts would clarify as a result of the investigations conducted”.
suspicions about illegal wire-tapping are not new. Several magistrates have stated that they believe that they have been spying on you, and the opposition senators Iván Cepeda, Antonio Sanguino and Roy Barreras reported last June that they were victims of unlawful interceptions with the purpose of making them a “mounting in court.” The own Barriers pointed out on Monday in several interviews that both the Government and the office of the Prosecutor knew of the traces. “Personally I reported these facts before the president of the Republic on 6 July 2019 and before the Prosecutor’s office expanded this complaint on the 29th of August. How well that ‘just learned’ when they read a Week? If you deny it, if you hide it, what guarantee is there that dismantle these devices?”, he said in a Twitter message.
