Colombia’s Inspector General Thursday appealed a recent decision of the Supreme Court to dismiss evidence allegedly found on computers of slain FARC leader “Raul Reyes” and re-open the trial against socialist politician Wilson Borja for his alleged ties to the guerrilla group.
In contrary to Colombia’s highest court, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez opines that the so-called “FARC-files” are legally obtained and the court should uphold the evidence in the Prosecutor General’s case against Borja.
According to the court, the files are inadmissible, because they were obtained outside of Colombia, without the authority of Ecuadorean authorities on whose soil the evidence was gathered and by state agents who were not authorized to collect evidence.
According to the IG, the evidence obtained in the March 1, 2008 military operation should be admitted, because it “was completely legal within international law.”
“It is not feasible to apply article 485 of the criminal procedure code related to the request for judicial assistance to foreign authorities … as it was not the carrying out the legal process within the framework of criminal proceedings, but a military operation which in unusual ways resulted in the obtaining of material evidence,” the Inspector General added.
According to Ordoñez, the military personnel at the time of the military operation were legitimately obtaining evidence.
The Inspector General went on to argue that the court in its ruling contradicted itself by first discarding the evidence and then specifying the content of the evidence saying that no emails, but Word documents were found.