Colombia’s Supreme Court wants President Alvaro Uribe to invite UN
rapporteur on judicial independence to the country, to look into the
increasingly controversial wiretap scandal that now implicates the
Presidency itself ordered the illegal wiretapping of judges.
In a statement, the court again asks the President to personally make a public statement on the scandal and to publicly promise guarantees magistrates and judges can do their work without being shadowed by State agents.
Moreover, the Supreme Court “demands of the National Government to set a date very soon for the rapporteur for Judicial Independence of the United Nations to come to our Republic.”
Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS is investigated for allegedly illegally wiretapping Supreme Court judges, journalists and opposition politicians. A former director of the agency’s counterintelligence unit said Thursday he talked directly to the President’s closest aides in the Casa de Nariño about wiretapping political opponents.
The Supreme Court immediately ordered the prosecutor General to offer witness protection to the former counterintelligence chief and his family to protect them from attempts to intimidate or murder them. If necessary, the Court said, the witness must be offered to stay abroad to secure his safety.
After this new revelation, the President of the State Council, Rafael Lafont, stated Friday that the intelligence agency “grossly violated the law.”