Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s Office will charge security agency DAS’s former deputy director Jose Miguel Narvaez with ordering the murder of journalist Jaime Garzon.
The decision was made following testimony from an unnamed source that implicated Narvaez in the crime.
Garzon was murdered in Bogota on August 13, 1999.
Investigation into Narvaez, who was originally arrested in for his involvement in the illegal wiretap scandal, began in October 2009, when demobilized paramilitary fighters implicated the former DAS deputy in the journalist’s murder.
Former paramilitary chiefs “Don Berna” and “El Iguano” both testified that it was Narvaez who ordered paramilitary organization AUC to murder the popular television personality.
Meanwhile, another demobilized paramilitary leader, “El Aleman,” claimed that the former head of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, had ordered the murder of Garzon at the request of senior military commanders. El Aleman said he didn’t know whether Narvaez was directly involved in the murder, but that the ex-DAS deputy gave to the AUC addresses of journalists, NGO workers and students who were thought to have links with the FARC guerrilla group.
“We took the addresses and names that he gave us because those people were leftist guerrillas infiltrating universities, NGOs and the media and they had to be killed” said El Aleman.