Colombia’s former Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martinez and former International Affairs director Ana Fabiola Castro have been accused of fraud and concealing evidence.
Specifically, Colombia’s war crimes tribunal JEP accused them of fraud and concealing evidence for trying to extradite a former FARC leader on drug charges that had been fabricated by US authorities.
War crimes tribunal president Roberto Vidal in a press conference urged the prosecution to “investigate any person” in the prosecution who may have conspired with Martinez and Castro to extradite late FARC leader “Jesus Santrich.”
It was gathered that among those connected are a significant number of possibly corrupt US officials.
Recall that former US Attorney Geoffrey Bergman of the Southern District of New York District Court, and assistant US Attorney Jason Richman and former assistant US Attorney Matthew LaRoche of that office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit presented the fabricated charges to a grand jury on April 4, 2018, for example.
Richman testified under oath that the charges against Santrich and his alleged co-conspirators were “the result of a drug trafficking investigation in Colombia.”
More so, DEA agent Brian Witek testified under oath that he coordinated the operation to frame Santrich from the US “following the instructions” of “American law enforcement authorities.”
It could also be recalled that then-DEA Bogota chief Jessy Garcia — who was explicitly mentioned by the JEP — told local media on April 10, 2018, that Santrich’ arrest the day before “was possible thanks to the collaboration of the Colombian authorities that, no matter where the investigations lead, are willing to do justice and support the DEA’s mission in Colombia,” implying this has nothing to do with fighting crime.
In February 2019, Bogota-based DEA agent Craig Michelin asked Martinez for $500,000 to finance a covert operation that sought to discredit the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) as their conspiracy against Santrich and Colombia’s peace process began falling apart.
However, this operation failed after the DEA agent flown in to coordinate the conspiracy found out that the JEP’s prosecutor and magistrates were considerably less corrupt than his bosses and the DEA’s partners in Colombia, .
In a statement, the JEP condemned the DEA’s illegal operations in Colombia that would allow Colombia’s prosecution to fabricate evidence and US prosecutors to fabricate charges an “attack against national sovereignty” when it rejected Santrich’s extradition request in May 2019,
Reports had it that the American request to extradite the FARC’s former ideologue created an unprecedented crisis and triggered a surge of newly created guerrilla groups formed by former FARC who decided to abandon their reintegration process.
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