Colombia’s Supreme Court formally opened an investigation into former Congress President Nancy Patricia Gutierrez, who is accused of using information obtained through illegal wiretaps in a debate on former Senator Piedad Cordoba’s alleged ties to the FARC.
The former senator, who is already under investigation for her alleged links to paramilitary death squads, is said to have used information that spies from intelligence agency DAS obtained through the illegal wiretapping of Cordoba.
Two former DAS officials testified they were ordered to give this information to the then-Congress president.
Fernando Tabares, the former intelligence director of the DAS, told investigators that DAS director Maria del Pilar Hurtado, who was granted political asylum in Panama last week, “in March 2008 said that the President’s Office ordered [us] to support Senator Nancy Patricia Gutierrez in a debate she was thinking of doing on Senator Piedad Cordoba. She gave instructions to me and to Marta Leal that all information about Senator Cordoba had to be given to Gutierrez so that she could use it in the debate, which I did.”
Leal, who is like Tabares in jail because of her illegal surveillance activities, testified that “doctor Maria del Pilar asked me to give certain information to doctor Nancy Patricia Gutierrez, who was president of Congress at that time, so that she had elements that would uphold a debate she was going to have in Congress.”
The former spy testified she went to Gutierrez house to hand the intelligence reports.
The scandal involving the illegal wiretapping of suspected government critics, including members of the Supreme Court, human rights workers, and journalists.