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Editorial Commentary
Gustavo Coronel: INTERPOL publishes
its FARC report and Chavez calls them “clowns”
In May 15, as promised, INTERPOL made public its report on the nature of the information contained by the laptops of the late Colombian FARC leader Raul Reyes.
The report by INTERPOL is sober and professional. The government of Colombia had required their help to find out if the information contained in the laptops of Raul Reyes was genuine or if it had been tampered with. The results of the report can be summarized as follows:
1. INTERPOL was asked by the government of Colombia to investigate if the contents of the laptops captured during the raid on the FARC camp in Ecuador had been in anyway created, modified or eliminated, after being in the hands of the Colombian authorities.
2. INTERPOL should establish if the documents found in the laptops had been handled professionally, in accordance with international procedures.
3. INTERPOL was not required to investigate the truth of the contents; there was no analysis of the documents as such. In fact, the experts examining the laptops did not know Spanish.
The main conclusions of INTERPOL were:
1. 609,6 gigabytes of documents were found: 109 files, 452 excel sheets, 7,989 electronic addresses, 10,537 multimedia files, 22,481 WebPages, 37,872 documents in WORD, PDF, and text, 210,888 images (photos?) and 983 ciphered documents.
2. Colombia had these laptops as of March 1 and INTERPOL started its examination March 10. From March 3 to March 10, the Colombian handling of the documents was in total line with international standards. From March 1 to March 3 the documents were not subject to treatment according to international standards. Why? Because they were accessed directly from the computers, instead of making copies and examining the copies.
3. There were no indications of falsification, creation of new documents, modification of existing documents or elimination of records.
4. Documents were found that had been changed, having dates that did not correspond to true dates, etc. These changes, says INTERPOL were all made before March 1, this is, they were made by the FARC themselves.
___________________________________________________________________INTERPOL SAYS THAT THE DOCUMENTS FOUND IN THE LAPTOPS AND OTHER
EQUIPMENT ARE ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS PRODUCED BY THE FARC AND DO NOT
SHOW ANY INDICATIONS OF MANIPULATION BY THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT
____________________________________________________________________The amount of information, as mentioned above, is very significant and there is no doubt that it will be subject to close examination for months to come. One wonders, for example, about the almost 8,000 email addresses. How many well-known names will be there? The list will probably become a who is who of terrorism!
The reactions of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and of his Minister of Defense were violent. “A show of clowns”, Chavez claimed. “ A great lie produced in U.S. laboratories”, cried the Minister, even before the report was issued. President Correa, in Ecuador, shouted, “I wouldn’t care less about this report” and added that “Uribe [the president of Colombia] is a psychopath”.
The situation is now as follows: since the contents of the laptops have not been tampered with, they must be the true documents generated by the FARC, many of them by Raul Reyes himself. They will have to be closely analyzed by governments and civil society all over the world and given the weight they deserve. Some will be unimportant, some highly important. Some might incriminate Hugo Chavez and his regime while others could incriminate Rafael Correa’s government. Again, many others might prove to be only of secondary value to establish a connection between the Colombian terrorists and the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador. What is true is that this process will become one of the most important issues in recent history for the hemispheric community, from Argentina in the south to Canada in the north. No government of the hemisphere can afford to keep silent. All the basic principles and values on which freedom, democracy, decency and love of peace are built will be put to the test. Citizens from the region will demand that principles prevail over parochial politics, that the OAS plays a proper role in defense of the Inter American Democratic Charter and that Insulza stops acting as a political pimp.
This investigation has to be done, cannot be let to die. We, Venezuelans, have to keep vigilant in order to assure that the investigation is done well and is taken to its ultimate consequences.
In the last two years Hugo Chavez has given enough indications of his ideological and emotional alignment with the FARC. His Minister of the Interior, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, has publicly declared Chavez’s desires that the FARC continue their war and has pledged Chavez’s support for them. We all saw this on Latin American television. The documents contained in the laptops of Raul Reyes will most probably reinforce the evidence related to these ties. When Chavez says that the INTERPOL report is a “show of clowns” and his minister of Defense claims that the whole thing is a “big lie”, a popular song from the 1970’s crosses my mind:
“ God didn’t make the little green apples,
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summer time
And there is no such thing as Dr. Seuss or Disneyland
and mother Goose, No nursery rhymes”….
Or, as we say in Venezuela: “Ahora cuéntame una de vaqueros”. Roughly translated as “Now, tell me one about cowboys”.
Gustavo Coronel is a 28 years oil industry veteran, a member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), author of several books. At the present Coronel is Petroleumworld associate editor and advisor on the opinion and editorial content of the site. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
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Petroleumworld News 05/16/08
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