On the first day of the trial against Bernardo Moreno, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s former personal secretary, the official’s defense team denied allegations that Moreno received the results of illegal wiretaps from agents of Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS, reports El Espectador.
Moreno’s lawyer Jaime Granados said that claims that Moreno had ordered former DAS director Fernando Alonso Tabares to keep an eye on Supreme Court judges, opposition politicians, journalists and trade unionists, were untrue.
Tabares testified last week that Moreno had given him the order during a private lunch he had with the president’s secretary and DAS director Maria del Pilar Hurtado in September 2007.
Granados said that Tabares’ claims cannot be worthy of prosecutorial discretion, as the former DAS director would be benefitting from such accusations.
The wiretap scandal became public in 2009 and caused outrage among magistrates, press, opposition politicians and human rights workers.
Following the scandal, Uribe was forced to dismantle the DAS, Interpol transfered its cooperation with Colombian authorities to the National Police and the U.S. Congress ordered that neither the DAS nor its successor receive any financial aid from the U.S. government.