Costa Rican authorities began a search for the Colombian fugitive Maria del Pilar Hurtado Tuesday, who is being investigated for espionage, local media reported.
Costa Rican security forces and Immigration Police have launched a search for former spy Maria del Pilar Hurtado, after receiving information from Colombia’s Foreign Minister that she may have entered the country after fleeing Panama in June, according to El Tiempo.
In pursuit of the disgraced former official, authorities are searching hotels and roads along in southern part of Costa Rica bordering Panama.The objective of the mission is to locate, arrest and deport the fugitive former director of now-defunct intelligence agency DAS.
Costa Rican Minister of Public Security, Celso Gamboa Sanchez, told Colombian Radio Blu that Hurtado did not apply for asylum in Costa Rica, El Espectador reported.
According to Gamboa, if Hurtado is in Costa Rica, she is there illegally, and has not applied for asylum. Both Costa Rica and the Colombian government have revoked the fugitive’s passport.
The former director of now-defunct intelligence agency DAS, Maria del Pilar Hurtado, reportedly left Panama in June, weeks before that country’s Supreme Court annulled the condemned official’s political asylum.
MORE: Colombia’s former spy chief fled to Costa Rica, new extradition request in the making
The DAS wiretapping scandal unfolded in 2008 after opposition politicians, media and authorities discovered that Colombia’s now-defunct intelligence agency, the DAS, had been spying on the Supreme Court, journalists, human rights defenders and politicians.
MORE: Victims of wiretapping scandal call for deportation of Colombia’s ex-spy chief from Panama