BOGOTA (Reuters) – The United States has suspended aid to Colombia’s DAS intelligence agency, whose agents are accused of illegally wiretapping President Alvaro Uribe’s opponents, journalists and top court magistrates.
The scandal is the latest to blemish the Colombian government under Uribe, a US ally who must step down this year after two terms during which he took a tough stand against leftist rebels and cocaine traffickers.
Uribe’s former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, is the favourite to succeed him in a May vote, but he now faces a growing challenge from independent candidate Antanas Mockus, a former Bogota mayor who promises more clean government.
The US ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, said cooperation aid to the Administrative Security Department, or DAS, would be transferred to the national police and the attorney general’s office’s CIT investigative unit.
“What the US government has done is transfer the collaboration we had with the DAS to other institutions, primarily the national police and the CIT,” Brownfield said in remarks broadcast on local radio yesterday.
The US Embassy did not provide details of the amount of aid given the DAS. But officials say US cooperation with the DAS covered joint and regional counter-drug operations, including providing equipment.
Scores of high-ranking DAS agents were fired after the telephone bugging scandal broke in 2009 and at least seven intelligence agents have been charged in the case by the attorney general’s office.
The government denies any of its officials ordered DAS agents to spy on opposition leaders, journalists and judges, and it says those responsible should be jailed. Uribe has ordered the DAS dismantled and a new intelligence body created.
The DAS works has been plagued by a series of scandals and ties to drug traffickers. Washington has provided Colombia with more than $5 billion in mostly anti-narcotics and military aid since 2000 to help fight drug smugglers and rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC.
Violence, kidnapping and bombings from the long war have ebbed. But Colombia still remains the world’s top cocaine exporter and state security officials, police and soldiers are occasionally caught up in drug-trafficking corruption.
The popular Uribe has managed to brush off other scandals while in office, and Santos leads in the polls for the May 30 election. But analysts say such scandals may benefit the campaign of Mockus, who has recently jumped to second place ahead of Conservative Party candidate Noemi Sanin.
Colombia is also pressing for a free trade agreement with the United States, but US Democrats, who control Congress, say they want the Andean country to do more to crack down on rights abuses by the armed forces and improve protection of labour organizers.
