News & Observer | newsobserver.com | Interpol backs Colombia

Published: May 16, 2008 12:30 AM
Modified: May 16, 2008 06:15 AM

Interpol backs Colombia

Finding on files outrages Chavez

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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Interpol said Thursday that computer files suggesting Venezuela was arming and financing Colombian guerrillas came from a rebel camp and were not tampered with, discrediting Venezuela's assertions that Colombia faked them.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the report as "ridiculous." But the findings are sure to increase pressure on Chavez to explain his relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

More revelations are likely: Interpol, an international police organization, also turned over to Colombia 983 files it decrypted.

"We are absolutely certain that the computer exhibits that our experts examined came from a FARC terrorist camp," Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said. "No one can ever question whether or not the Colombian government tampered with the seized FARC computers."

Chavez called Noble "a tremendous actor" and an "immoral police officer who applauds killers." He denies arming or funding the FARC, though he openly sympathizes with Latin America's most powerful rebel army.

Colombian commandos recovered three Toshiba Satellite laptop computers, two external hard drives and three USB memory sticks after destroying the rebel camp just across the border in Ecuador. FARC foreign minister, Raul Reyes, and 24 others were killed in the raid March 1.

Interpol addressed Chavez's charges that no computer could have survived the bombardment by showing photographs of metal cases that protected them during the raid. "Mr. Reyes is now dead, but they were definitely his computers, his disks, his hardware," Noble said.

The Interpol study was done at Colombia's request. Interpol ran 10 computers nonstop for two weeks to crack the encrypted files. Noble said it was up to Colombia to decide whether to make their contents public. It also gave Colombia a separate confidential report for use in criminal investigations.

Interpol limited itself to verifying whether Colombia altered the files and correctly handled the evidence, and did not address the contents of the documents.

"They are serious allegations about Venezuela supplying arms and support to a terrorist organization," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

Some U.S. Republicans renewed calls Thursday for the State Department to add Venezuela to its list of state terror sponsors. That would prompt economic sanctions against a key U.S. oil supplier.

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