A Colombia judge has decided to increase prison sentences on two former intelligence officers who were already convicted for their roles in a wiretapping scandal that unfolded in 2008, local media reported on Thursday.
As more information came to light in the cases against former officials from Colombia’s now-defunct intelligence agency DAS, a Bogota judge has increased the sentences of Luz Marina Rodriguez and Bernardo Murillo Cajamarca from six years in prison to 12.
In addition to their crimes of conspiracy, abuse of public office, and violation of communication for spying on opposition politicians, journalists, and human rights advocates, Rodriguez and Cajamarca have also been linked to infiltrating Colombia’s supreme court.
“As the development of their functional duties, among which are highlighted sessions or private meetings, […] the obtaining of copies of legal proceedings, of which they enjoyed legal reserve — that is to say they unlawfully infiltrated the Supreme Court of Justice,” said the judge.
According to the court, former DAS operative director Rodriguez and ex- anti-corruption director Cajamarca “had full knowledge of the illegal actions that came forward from that institution [DAS] against journalists, and political leaders in opposition to the government of former President Alvaro Uribe and members of the high court between 2005 and 2009,” reported regional newspaper Vanguardia.
Both Rodriguez and Cajamarca were convicted in 2011 for their roles in the wiretapping scandal in which they were fined, banned from serving in public office, and sentenced from three to eight years in prison.
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Colombia’s former intelligence agency was dissolved in 2011 after 58 years among dozens of scandals including paramilitary ties, corruption, and illegal wiretapping.
The ex-spy chief of the DAS, Maria Pilar del Hurtado, has been in exile in Panama since the scandal broke while President Juan Manuel Santos is looking to Panama’s government to extradite her.
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