EVER SINCE PRESIDENT URIBE had made his announcements about the Tasmania letter in October 2007, Iván Velásquez’s life had been upended. On the court, Velásquez found that many of his colleagues were suddenly afraid of conducting investigations in the way they had done before—every time they interviewed a witness, they had to wonder whether that witness would later do a “Tasmania” on them, claiming that the justices had solicited false testimony. “With Tasmania, the government got many members of the investigative commission to practically stop working,” Velásquez would later recall.
And although Velásquez attempted to forge ahead, many of his contacts—prosecutors, judges, investigators—who would ordinarily have chatted with him and shared information, were now reluctant to be seen with him. One woman at the inspector general’s office, someone he had once considered a friend, flatly told him that even though she thought highly of him, she could no longer speak with him; if people knew they were friends, she could be fired. So Velásquez never spoke to her again. But at least, he thought, she had told him what she was doing. Many other contacts simply vanished. “It was like when someone knows there is a death threat against him, and nobody will enter the car with him for fear that a bomb will go off,” he would later explain. His wife, María Victoria, also later recalled that she tried to organize a party in those days, and ended up having to cancel it, because so many of their former friends said they could not attend. Velásquez had aspired to become a full justice on one of Colombia’s high courts, but now the other Supreme Court judges, whose support he would need to get confirmed, gave him the cold shoulder. His future in the judiciary, it seemed, was now over.
The Tasmania episode also affected Velásquez’s children: Velásquez’s youngest daughter, Laura, who was starting university, was so upset by the attacks on her father over the Tasmania letter that she missed a couple of weeks of school. By the time she went back, word had spread about who her father was, and many of her classmates refused to talk to her.
Even going out could be stressful: on one occasion, Velásquez and María Victoria were at a shopping mall when a woman stopped them to angrily ask why Velásquez was trying to harm the president. His daughter Catalina noticed that when they entered restaurants together, the entire room would go silent as people stared at him. They also had to worry about security: One day, Laura was on her way to take the public bus to school when she noticed men photographing her. A few days later, Catalina and her husband were in their car on their way to her job when she noticed a group of people taking photos of her from another car; she pretended not to see them, and they made a point of driving next to her. The family took it as a warning.
Shortly after Uribe’s accusations against Velásquez, and the Supreme Court’s complaints, the police assigned the assistant justice a bulletproof car, a driver, and two armed guards. But in late November, the family was rattled when they received a letter from a senior police official saying that he had determined that Velásquez did not need the guards, because he had the same level of risk as any other Colombian. The Supreme Court complained publicly, and Chief of Police Óscar Naranjo intervened. He immediately reinstated the security detail; the officer who had removed it had not consulted with anyone, he said, and had disobeyed written instructions.
Regardless of the level of protection her husband had, María Victoria was terrified that someone would try to kill him. Certainly, an attack on Velásquez would carry political costs, but you could never be sure how far some people would be willing to go to stop his investigations. On April 22, 2008, the Protection Directorate of the attorney general’s office sent a letter to Jairo Castillo Peralta, known as “Pitirri,” the Canada-based witness who had been testifying against the Sucre congressmen and Mario Uribe: “Through intelligence information, this directorate has become aware that two persons may be traveling as tourists to that country to assassinate you,” the letter said. The officials asked Pitirri to inform the Canadian authorities to ensure that his security measures were strengthened “in the extreme.” Although the letter was marked secret, Pitirri immediately made it public: he had no formal security measures in place, and found it odd that the Colombian authorities were writing to him, instead of coordinating directly with Canada to ensure his protection.
Velásquez tried to calm María Victoria down, but he, too, was now on high alert. Deep, dark circles hung from his brown eyes, and he was constantly on the lookout for threats: he went quiet whenever a waiter approached his table at a café, and he removed the battery from his phone whenever he had a sensitive conversation, to keep the intelligence service or other unknown enemies from tapping it as a surveillance device against him.
And yet Velásquez also had encounters that encouraged him to keep going: people he didn’t know stopped him on the street to say things like, “You’re very brave,” “Keep going,” and “Don’t let the president stop you.” In a society that rarely tolerated different points of view, and where there was overwhelming pressure to support the president, at least some people saw the court’s willingness to go after powerful members of Congress as a reason for hope—a sign that it was possible to go against the current and stand on principle.
WHEREAS VELÁSQUEZ VIEWED the extraditions as a blow to his investigations, and Calderón viewed them as a way to silence the extradited paramilitaries and intimidate the ones who were left behind, the George W. Bush administration in the United States welcomed them. To the US government, the extraditions were valuable for at least two reasons: the Justice Department wanted to prosecute the drug kingpins, and, as noted by White House spokesperson Dana Perino, the extraditions might help “persuade” Democratic members of Congress to finally move on the pending free trade agreement with Colombia. Over the preceding year, opposition to the deal seemed to have hardened, despite the Colombian government’s aggressive lobbying in DC—which had even included trying to enlist former president Bill Clinton’s help. In October 2007, the New York Times ran an editorial urging members of Congress to hold off on a deal: “President Álvaro Uribe and his government have not done enough to bring to justice the paramilitary thugs and their political backers responsible for widespread human rights violations.… [W]ithholding ratification can still be used as a lever to change Mr. Uribe’s behavior.” The two leading Democratic presidential candidates in US elections that year, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, had also expressed opposition to the deal. But Bush viewed the trade pact as a high priority, and in April 2008, in a move that many Democrats viewed as aggressive grandstanding, he announced that he was submitting the deal to Congress to force a vote. Regardless of their effect on investigations in Colombia, the extraditions now made it very hard to argue that the Uribe administration was being soft on the paramilitaries.
PART IV
TRUTH
BOGOTÁ, 2008–2010
CHAPTER 15
CONFESSIONS
“IS THIS A TRAP?” IVÁN Velásquez asked himself as he read the letter from Iván Roberto Duque.
Duque, also known as “Ernesto Báez,” was one of Colombia’s longest-running paramilitary leaders: a lawyer and politician, Duque had been a senior member of one of Colombia’s first “self-defense” groups, the Association of Middle Magdalena Ranchers and Farmers (Asociación Campesina de Ganaderos y Agricultores del Magdalena Medio, or ACDEGAM), which in the 1980s was already committing large numbers of killings and “disappearances” of community leaders, trade unionists, and others they associated with the left. Later on, Duque was said to have become one of Carlos Castaño’s closest advisers, and then, when Castaño lost influence within the AUC, Duque joined the Central Bolívar Block as a close adviser to its leader, Carlos Mario Jiménez, aka “Macaco,” whom President Álvaro Uribe had extradited in May 2008. The articulate and sharp Duque often portrayed himself as an intellectual leader for the AUC—a political representative and a true believer in the group’s far-right-wing views, who was not involved in the “military” or operational side of the g
roup’s activities, though reports suggested otherwise. The paramilitaries from the Middle Magdalena had always been close to drug traffickers, including Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, known as “The Mexican,” a Medellín cartel member who had bought land in the Middle Magdalena region and provided substantial funding to the group. But the United States had never requested Duque’s extradition, and so Duque was still in Colombia, participating in the Justice and Peace process and serving a reduced sentence in Itagüí prison on the outskirts of Medellín.
In June 2008, Duque sent a letter to Velásquez, writing that he had learned of supremely serious matters that he wanted to report to him immediately. He asked that Velásquez meet with him and José Orlando Moncada, that is, “Tasmania,” as soon as possible. Tasmania had in fact cosigned the letter—proof, Duque said, of the younger man’s goodwill.
Velásquez had interviewed Duque at length as part of the parapolitics investigations, and he had a good rapport with the paramilitary leader, who seemed eager to talk. With his loud, raspy voice, dramatic storytelling style, and prodigious memory, Duque was a surprisingly magnetic witness, and so far, his testimony about politicians’ links with his group seemed fairly credible. Still, Velásquez had every reason to question the motives behind this letter, especially with Tasmania involved. Was this part of yet another elaborate attempt to get him in trouble by manufacturing “evidence” against him? Thanks to the court’s backing, Velásquez had been able to hold onto his job, for now, but he was well aware that another flurry of attacks could be in the works. And yet, if this was a genuine offer to talk, Velásquez could not ignore it.
So, as soon as he obtained permission from the justices, Velásquez slipped an audio recorder into his suit-jacket pocket and traveled to Itagüí.
“OH JUDGE, I’m so ashamed, forgive me judge!” Tasmania finally said. He had looked flustered when he first came into the large prison meeting room where Velásquez—after negotiating an unusually difficult amount of paperwork to access the prison—was waiting to interview him. “Calm down,” Velásquez had greeted him, making clear he was turning on his audio recorder. “Have a seat.” But almost immediately, the strong-looking, still-young Tasmania launched into an apology for the letter to Uribe. Then he began to tell Velásquez his version of events, which he would later repeat under oath.
According to Tasmania, it was “totally false” that Velásquez or any of the investigators who came to talk to him had ever asked him to speak about President Uribe. He recalled that Velásquez had asked him about Mario Uribe—which was to be expected, because Tasmania had come from Mario Uribe’s hometown, Andes—and that Velásquez had asked him about a drug trafficker, Juan Carlos “El Tuso” Sierra, who was also from Andes and had demobilized with the AUC. But what was in the letter to the president was simply false.
In fact, Tasmania said, he never wrote the letter to Uribe—he only went to school up to third or fourth grade, and could not have written it. Rather, he had signed the letter without reading it, because it was among several documents he was signing to apply to enter the Justice and Peace process—he thought his lawyer, Sergio González (whose office was in the same building as Mario Uribe’s), had written the letter. It was only after he signed it that El Tuso, who was also in Itagüí prison, and who had secured González’s representation of Tasmania a couple of months earlier, told him what he had signed. According to Tasmania, El Tuso said the letter was needed “to help some friends.” Tasmania expressed concern about the letter—he didn’t want to get into trouble. But El Tuso said it was no big deal—he had to go along with the plan, because “his family” was at stake. According to Tasmania, El Tuso had used a threatening tone; at the same time, the drug trafficker had offered him benefits, such as “money and a house for my mom.” Tasmania had many children, so the money was appealing. Also, El Tuso promised to get Tasmania moved to Patio 1 in Itagüí, where the paramilitary leaders participating in the Justice and Peace process were staying. There, he would enjoy many more comforts, including better food, a television, and frequent visits from family. In fact, Tasmania said, El Tuso and González had delivered on the transfer promise almost immediately; on October 1, 2007, he had been informed that by presidential order he was being transferred to Patio 1. Then, soon after the letter was made public, González and El Tuso arranged to have his mother relocated from her little plot of land to a new house. They began to pay her rent and utilities.
Once President Uribe made the letter public, on October 7, Tasmania was flooded with calls from the media, and El Tuso helped him respond. Tasmania claimed that El Tuso and González even drafted a script for him to read from for his interview with Vicky Dávila of La FM radio. The goal, El Tuso told him, was to “attack justices.” Tasmania said he didn’t even know what a justice was—“I’m a peasant,” he said. But El Tuso told him that a justice was a lawyer, and that Tasmania shouldn’t worry about any of that because they would get lawyers to defend him.
According to Tasmania, El Tuso told him that the “friends” they were trying to help were Mario Uribe, the president’s second cousin, and Santiago Uribe, the president’s brother. After one interview, Tasmania said, El Tuso even showed him a letter in which—according to El Tuso—Mario was congratulating Tasmania for his work. He said he was told that letters had come from both Mario and Santiago, though he didn’t know them or their handwriting, so he couldn’t confirm that.
Later on, Tasmania told Velásquez, El Tuso and González abandoned him. El Tuso stopped talking to him, and after six months they stopped paying his mother’s rent. He never received the money he had been promised. After President Uribe extradited the paramilitary leaders, including El Tuso, Tasmania managed to get ahold of González to ask what had happened to all their promises, but the lawyer told him that that was old news. Tasmania wasn’t going to get any help anymore because the paramilitary leaders were gone.
“I became very sad,” Tasmania later said. “I like music, I like to play the guitar and sing. I used to always get together with Báez [Iván Roberto Duque] in a library office to play guitar. He saw I was worried and asked, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you like that?’ I told him about the frame job against Iván Velásquez in which they had involved me, and said look at the problem I had now, that I had to give statements but didn’t even have a lawyer to do anything, that they dumped me along with my family.… [Duque] said, ‘You need to communicate with the court, with that justice, to explain.’”
So, according to Tasmania, Duque drafted the letter that Velásquez later received. Tasmania just wanted to clear things up, he said. Now that he knew what a justice was, he was sorry. He was also scared.
Once Tasmania had finished, Velásquez spoke to Duque, who confirmed what Tasmania had said. Both men said they would be willing to repeat their statements to investigators.
Although Velásquez wasn’t sure if he was getting the full story, a lot of what Tasmania and Duque said made sense to him. At a minimum, their statements should finally be enough to put President Uribe’s accusations against him to rest. Not only that, but Tasmania’s allegations against González, Santiago Uribe, and Mario Uribe should give investigators solid leads to pursue.
MEANWHILE, RICARDO CALDERÓN was actively pursuing what he now viewed as the larger story behind the Tasmania scandal: the existence of an ongoing plot, involving people at the highest levels of the government, to discredit and undermine the Supreme Court, particularly Velásquez. In April 2008, he had a conversation with Edwin Guzmán, the former paramilitary in Washington, DC, who, shortly after the Tasmania scandal broke, had stated that Velásquez had offered him benefits in exchange for testifying against the president. Like Tasmania, Guzmán also took his statement back. According to Guzmán, he had made the accusation against Velásquez because an official had offered to help him get visas to bring his family to the United States. “And because I was desperate, well, I said what they told me to say. The bad thing is that after they had me talk to journalists
and I gave the statement, they never even answered my calls again, and obviously didn’t do anything they promised.” In an interview with Calderón, the official Guzmán had mentioned strongly denied the former paramilitary’s new claims. Combined with Tasmania’s retraction, however, these new statements suggested that there had been a much larger plot. Calderón would keep trying to piece it together.
WITHIN A MATTER of weeks, thanks to Tasmania’s and Guzmán’s retractions, the attorney general’s office closed its investigation of President Uribe’s allegations against Velásquez. Instead, it ordered the investigation of Sergio González, Tasmania, and Edwin Guzmán for their involvement in the plot against the assistant justice. But Velásquez was dissatisfied: the prosecutors did not even mention the names of Mario or Santiago Uribe, apparently having decided not to investigate their potential roles in the plot. Years later, then attorney general Mario Iguarán said that such an investigation “should have moved forward.”
Velásquez’s suspicions were further stoked when, in August 2008, additional facts came to light that raised questions about how the Tasmania plot had come about. Ramiro Bejarano, a prominent law professor and attorney—and frequent critic of President Uribe through a regular op-ed column in El Espectador—who represented César Julio Valencia in the defamation case Uribe had brought against the Supreme Court president, had filed a public records request with the government to find out how Uribe had received the letter. The Uribe administration replied that it had obtained the letter from the head of the DAS, María del Pilar Hurtado. Bejarano filed another public records request with the DAS to find out how Hurtado had learned of the Tasmania case. She replied in writing that the information had come from Bernardo Moreno, President Uribe’s chief of staff, who had asked her to send detectives to Itagüí prison to pick up some documents in the national interest. Bejarano followed up with a records request to Moreno, asking how he learned about the Tasmania letter. Moreno replied that he had learned about it through an anonymous call on September 29, 2007—he could not identify the caller—and so that day he had asked the head of the DAS to look into it.
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