Colombia’s Inspector General clashed with the country’s Supreme
Court over informal interviews the Court wants to have with former
paramilitary chief Jorge 40.
The court wants to interview the extradited head of paramilitary organization AUC over his ties to Congressmen, but the Inspector General considers this “anti-constitutional.”
In a letter sent to the high court, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez says interviews without the presence of suspects’ defense attorneys or himself are “vague, lacking determination and dangerous.”
The Court immediately responded the two-page letter with a fifteen-page letter wherein it rejects the Inspector General’s criticism.
According to the Supreme Court, the interviews are not illegal or dangerous, because they are not about gathering evidence against specific suspects. According to the Court, they are part of general information gathering about the paramilitaries’ ties to politicians.
The Court accuses the Inspector General of trying to hinder the Court’s quest for truth and is trying to discredit the Court’s investigative activities.
Colombia’s highest judicial body refuses the Inspector General to take part in the interviews and tells Ordoñez to not try to further interfere with the Court’s functioning.
The Supreme Court has opened investigations against more than seventy lawmakers with alleged ties to paramilitary death squads over the past few years.