There Are No Dead Here

by Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno

  The justices were alarmed: if this was true, they concluded, the DAS was engaging in obstruction of justice. So they decided to convene meetings with Attorney General Mario Iguarán and Inspector General Edgardo Maya the next day, October 4. At those meetings, the justices asked Velásquez to repeat the story to the other officials, and then they formally filed a criminal complaint over the DAS’s surveillance of Velásquez. The following Monday, the president issued his press release about Tasmania’s letter.

  THE PUBLIC FOCUS on the Tasmania scandal continued for days. News outlets ran interview after interview with the president and members of his administration, as well as with Tasmania himself. Velásquez felt like his phone never stopped ringing—journalists wanted to know why he was trying to frame the best president in the history of Colombia for murder. At Uribe’s request, Attorney General Iguarán opened an investigation against Velásquez for the alleged attempt to frame the president. This investigation would run concurrently with the investigation into the court’s complaint over the DAS’s alleged surveillance of the assistant justice. In all his time working on the parapolitics cases, Velásquez had never felt so much pressure.

  Velásquez was convinced that, had it not been for the tip he had received about the meeting at the DAS, and his quick action to inform the Supreme Court, Uribe’s onslaught against him in the media might have gotten him fired. Getting rid of him was probably the objective behind the entire Tasmania episode, though exactly who was behind it, and why, remained hazy. Even though the whole criminal chamber was involved in the investigations, the media had identified Velásquez as the main force pushing the cases forward, and so he was an obvious target for people who wanted to discredit the endeavor.

  Other members of the court, however, may have been inclined to believe Velásquez, because they had themselves already felt the effects of Uribe’s frustration—including through the president’s attacks on the court over the preceding months. The Supreme Court president, César Julio Valencia, also said he had had a troubling phone call with President Uribe. He had received his call on September 26, just a couple of hours after the court announced that it had indicted Senator Mario Uribe. According to Valencia, early that evening he was at a meeting with the head of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights when a secretary pulled him out of the meeting because the president was looking for him. Valencia remembered that when he got on the phone, the president sounded “furious.” Uribe spent about half an hour complaining to the justice about Tasmania and Velásquez—this was many days before the October 6 press release about Tasmania’s letter. Much later, Valencia would tell a journalist that President Uribe also touched upon the Mario Uribe case, though Valencia refused to elaborate on what Uribe had said. Surprised and shaken, Valencia said little on the phone call with Uribe—as he later remembered it, most of his answers had been monosyllabic. But the next day, September 27, Valencia briefed several other justices who worked with him on the civil chamber of the court about the call. He also informed Sigifredo Espinosa, who was then acting president of the criminal chamber. Valencia did not know Velásquez well, as they were on different chambers of the court, so he didn’t tell Velásquez about the call at the time.

  Once President Uribe made his public accusations against Velásquez in connection with the Tasmania letter, Valencia and the rest of the court decided to back up the assistant justice. On a radio show, Valencia warned that what Uribe had stated was not only incorrect, but also posed a threat to Velásquez’s security. Moreover, he said, it amounted to obstruction of the parapolitics investigations. Sigifredo Espinosa also spoke out in defense of Velásquez.

  But the justices were courting Uribe’s ire. On some news shows, Uribe insulted the justices, calling Valencia a fraud. On La FM radio, the president said that the last time he had seen Justice Espinosa, Espinosa had asked him for help getting one of his relatives into college. Uribe said he had not been able to help because the person didn’t meet the requirements, but that he “hoped that wasn’t why” Espinosa was mad at him. Uribe added that Espinosa had asked him to his house to eat some beans, but that Uribe had been unable to attend.

  To most of the justices, who were not used to working in the public spotlight—much less to being subjected to personal attacks by the president—Uribe’s comments were highly intimidating. Still, the court as a whole remained consistent in its response. On October 9 it issued a formal statement noting that Velásquez and assistant justice Luz Adriana Camargo had interviewed Tasmania on September 10 as part of their regular work and at Tasmania’s request. The next day, the court said, Uribe had called Velásquez, and the court had informed the attorney general and the inspector general of these events. Without specifically referencing Uribe’s attacks, the court then called on government officials to “respect the autonomy and independence” of the judges; it “emphatically rejected” as false the suggestion that the court was engaging in any kind of conspiracy. It emphasized that all of its decisions were the result of joint discussion, rather than any one individual’s preferences, and, moreover, that it strongly supported the statements of Valencia and Espinosa: they had “acted faithfully as spokespersons” of the court.

  A COUPLE OF days after the initial round of interviews, the media reported on yet another allegation against Velásquez, this time coming from a former paramilitary and retired member of the military, Edwin Guzmán, who was now living in the United States. The news stories said that, after seeing the Tasmania story, he had decided to approach the Colombian consulate in New York to report that Velásquez and another justice had done the same thing with him: “They said that if I had anything against the president, if I had seen or heard him, no matter what it was, that I should report it and that they would help me leave the country along with my family.” Uribe’s supporters immediately seized on Guzmán’s claims as further proof that Velásquez was obsessed with trying to frame the president for something—anything—and would go to great lengths to do so. To Velásquez’s supporters on the court and elsewhere, it seemed evident that Guzmán’s claims were just part of a larger plot to discredit him, though there was no way to prove it.

  URIBE’S PRESS RELEASE and subsequent attacks on him and on the court initially surprised and disappointed Velásquez. He knew the intelligence service was up to no good, and, of course, he disagreed with many of the president’s policies. But he had always believed that Uribe was a straight shooter—someone who would confront him directly if anything was wrong. In Antioquia, when Uribe had backed the establishment of the Convivirs, Velásquez recalled, he did so openly, even vociferously, despite the fact that many people opposed him. Given that the president had already called him on September 11 to ask about the Tasmania meeting, why wouldn’t he just call Velásquez directly again after receiving the letter? Why issue a press release and then go on this media rampage?

  To María Victoria, Uribe’s actions simply confirmed her suspicions about his call to Velásquez a month earlier: “Do you now see that there was nothing good in that call he made to you?” she had asked Velásquez when he had told her of the secret DAS meeting. It was partly at María Victoria’s insistence that Velásquez had informed the court about it before Uribe’s press conference. “That man can do everything against you, you have to understand,” she had told him. “You’re a nobody, and it’s so easy to build up something against you, and then what are we going to do?”

  As the days passed and the attacks continued, Velásquez also started to develop a darker view of what was happening. The Tasmania letter was dated September 11—the same day that Uribe had called Velásquez—but the whole story of how the letter got to Uribe was murky, and in interviews Uribe seemed evasive about it. At first, Uribe had said that by the time he called Velásquez, he had only “heard” about the Tasmania interview from “several sources,” which he did not name. He said that after he called Velásquez, he trusted what the assistant justice told him, and “forgot about” the issue. It was on
ly later, Uribe said, that he received the Tasmania letter—he didn’t say how. But Uribe claimed he had waited to go public until the DAS had confirmed the authenticity of the letter, and until Tasmania had reiterated his allegations in an interview with the attorney general’s office. Once he received that confirmation, he said, he asked the attorney general—both in private and in public—to investigate. But on October 14, the newspaper El Tiempo reported that Uribe’s brother, Santiago, had informed the president of Velásquez’s supposed offer to Tasmania on the very same day that Velásquez met with the paramilitary. It turned out that Santiago Uribe was a neighbor of Sergio González, Tasmania’s lawyer, who told Santiago about the meeting right away.

  The connection between Santiago Uribe and Sergio González was in itself suspicious. But Velásquez also wondered why, if Uribe had known about the meeting as early as September 10, he had waited nearly a month to go public. The explanation about waiting for the DAS to confirm the authenticity of the letter did not add up: Why would the DAS take so long to confirm something so simple? And it was still unclear how the actual letter got into Uribe’s hands.

  And then there was Tasmania’s behavior: the day after Uribe’s press release about the Tasmania letter, Velásquez listened to an interview that La FM conducted with him, and he was surprised at the ease with which Tasmania spoke. The illiterate paramilitary had barely said a word when Velásquez had interviewed him, and had used fairly basic language when he did speak. Somebody must have coached him on what to say on the radio.

  Velásquez also soon learned that on October 1, Tasmania had been transferred from Patio 2, the maximum-security section of Itagüí prison, where he was among the general population, to Patio 1, which held only a few dozen senior AUC leaders, who were participating in the Justice and Peace process. The transfer had major implications for Tasmania’s quality of life: In Patio 2, family visits and a prisoner’s ability to receive packages were tightly restricted, and the prisoners had no access to televisions, phones, or computers. Now, in Patio 1, this low-level paramilitary could enjoy much more frequent visits from his four children; he could watch TV and use a cellphone and a computer; and instead of regular prison food, he could eat food that was specially prepared for the paramilitary leaders in a separate kitchen.

  All these facts, combined with the intensity and persistence of the attacks against him, led Velásquez to conclude that he had been the target of a coordinated operation to undermine the parapolitics investigations and discredit him personally—maybe even get him kicked off the court. It was sheer luck that he had learned about the DAS’s actions beforehand, and had been able to warn the court and get it on his side.

  But Velásquez was now constantly wondering: What other attacks might be in the works?

  CHAPTER 14

  BETRAYAL

  RICARDO CALDERÓN WOKE UP AT 1 a.m. on May 13, 2008, to a call from Antonio López, the paramilitary known as “Job” who had contacted him in 2007 with accusations about the Supreme Court: “They’re taking my papa away.” He was referring to his boss, Diego Murillo Bejarano, or “Don Berna,” who had headed up the Envigado Office and the Cacique Nutibara Block of the AUC. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  Calderón had no idea what Job was talking about, but the story was soon all over the news: shortly after midnight, hundreds of police officers had surrounded prisons in three different cities and taken fourteen men out, including most of the top paramilitary leaders—Don Berna, Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (“Jorge 40”), and others, including drug trafficker Juan Carlos “El Tuso” Sierra—and transported them to a major military air base outside of Bogotá, the Military Transport Air Command (Comando Aéreo de Transporte Militar, or CATAM). There, police handed them over to officials from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, who loaded them onto an airplane bound for the United States, where indictments were pending against them.

  In a press conference, flanked by his defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, and his minister of interior, Carlos Holguín, and surrounded by multiple cabinet members, National Police Chief Óscar Naranjo, and Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, President Álvaro Uribe read a statement explaining the extraditions: “Today at dawn, a group of citizens was extradited because some of them had committed new crimes after subjecting themselves to the Justice and Peace Law, others were not cooperating as they should with the justice system, and all were failing to meet their obligations to provide reparation to victims by hiding assets or delaying their turnover.” Uribe pointed out that the government had retained the capacity to decide whether someone should be included on the list to receive Justice and Peace benefits, as well as to decide on suspension of extraditions. The paramilitaries’ demobilization process was the first time, he said, that persons in a peace process had been required to tell the truth and provide reparation. But the truth had to be “simple and timely” and could not be “manipulated.” The United States, he said, was still committed to allowing the extradited paramilitaries to continue participating remotely in judicial proceedings in Colombia; any assets turned over to US authorities would be transferred to Colombia for the reparation of victims. This arrangement, Uribe said, would contribute to a telling of “the truth without distortion.”

  A week before, the government had extradited another paramilitary leader, Carlos Mario Jiménez, aka “Macaco,” who commanded the “Central Bolívar Block” of the AUC, which operated in multiple regions scattered throughout Colombia. But that extradition was no surprise: in August 2007, the United States had filed an extradition request for Macaco, citing evidence that the paramilitary had engaged in extensive trafficking of cocaine to the United States as recently as 2007. Because the US indictments involved criminal activity that continued well past the passage of the Justice and Peace Law—in fact, the indictment specifically referenced bank transactions dated the same day of and the day after the passage of the law—it would have been very difficult for the Uribe government to justify ignoring the request and letting Macaco stay in the Justice and Peace process. Instead, on August 24, 2007, a few days before the request was made public, the government transferred Macaco from Itagüí prison to a more secure facility in Cómbita, claiming that it had become aware of ongoing criminal activity by the paramilitary. It did the same to Don Berna. Then, in September, the government transferred Macaco to a navy brig in the Atlantic Ocean, citing security reasons. The extradition had been delayed while the Supreme Court reviewed the extradition request; once the Supreme Court approved the extradition, in April 2008, and after the High Council of the Judiciary lifted a stay, in May, the government moved quickly to ship Macaco away.

  The extradition of the other paramilitary leaders, however, seemed to have come out of nowhere. A year had passed since Calderón had published his blockbuster stories about how the supposedly demobilized paramilitaries were committing crimes from prison, and—with the exception of Macaco—the government had not even tried to expel them from the Justice and Peace process, much less extradite them. For Uribe to claim, all of a sudden, that he was extraditing them because of their crimes made no sense: Why do this now?

  Years later, people involved in the decision would offer slightly different explanations. Presidential adviser José Obdulio Gaviria would say that the paramilitaries were surprised by their extradition: they had bought the line of the government’s critics, who said that the Justice and Peace Law was meant to secure their impunity. But Gaviria insisted that that had never been the case. The law clearly stated that they could not commit more crimes, and they had been warned. Once reports started to trickle in from the United States indicating that the paramilitaries were still involved in arms and drug trafficking, Gaviria explained, Uribe decided that he had no choice but to activate the extradition orders.

  General Óscar Naranjo, the chief of police, said that—at least with regard to Macaco and Don Berna—the decision to extradite them was based on information that the police had been collecting. He said that from t
he time he was appointed, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had asked him to bring him any evidence of paramilitaries committing crimes from prison; if there was such evidence, he would talk to the president about extraditing those who were involved. Naranjo said the police then did legally collect recordings showing that Macaco and Don Berna were giving orders from prison, and he brought that evidence to the government, prompting the security meeting at which Uribe decided to proceed with the extraditions. Asked why the president decided to extradite all of them, rather than just Macaco and Don Berna, Naranjo simply said, “That was a decision the president made.”

  In his own autobiography, Uribe recounted simply that it became obvious over time that the paramilitaries were still committing crimes and were not going to turn over their wealth, and that Colombia’s prisons were not strong enough to contain them. “I had one reason, and one reason alone, for extraditing these men,” he wrote. “I thought it would improve Colombia’s security. I believed that by removing these individuals from our country, we could not only prevent them from committing further crimes, but also show other individuals that they would face dire consequences if they did not cooperate with us.… [T]he decision was in fact not abrupt at all; it was the culmination of a years-long, painstakingly incremental process of trying to convince these men to cooperate.”

  AT THE TIME, Calderón was particularly intrigued by the decision to extradite Don Berna. On the surface, his extradition made sense, as it was well known that Don Berna was one of the paramilitary leaders most wanted by the United States: the United States had issued a provisional arrest warrant for him as early as July 2004, for trafficking millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine into the states. In fact, cables later made public revealed that in meeting after meeting, the US embassy in Colombia had raised Don Berna’s case with the Colombian authorities, pressing for his extradition. The DEA considered him not only a major drug trafficker, but “the de facto leader” of the AUC, “in charge of its narcotics-trafficking activities, including all of its cocaine transportation and financial operations.” Berna, the DEA charged, “maintained his power in the AUC in part from the proceeds of his drug-trafficking activities.”