The scandal-plagued agency may have been involved in a plot to kill a former senator, according to documents uncovered by Semana magazine.
Shortly after a deadly car bomb failed to kill Sen. Germán Vargas Lleras in 2005, the country’s spy agency blamed the attack on leftist guerrillas and closed the case.
But according to a cache of secret documents obtained by Semana magazine, the scandal-plagued agency may have had a hand in the plot to kill Vargas, who is now the minister of interior and one of President Juan Manuel Santos’ closest advisors.
Citing the previously undisclosed communiqués, Semana said Colombia’s Administrative Security Department, or DAS, suspected the assassination plot had been an inside job and that one of its own agents had provided the explosives.
But the agency seemed to try to cover up its involvement by blaming the attack on the FARC, pulling the lead investigator and closing the case, the magazine said.
The agency also muddied the waters by releasing a composite drawing of a suspect and telling the media at the time that it had requested the FBI’s assistance in solving the case. It later emerged that the drawing was fictional and the FBI had never been contacted.
Vargas had been a close ally to President Alvaro Uribe at the time. The magazine does not speculate why he might have been targeted by the DAS.
In its Sunday edition, Semana said other documents in the cache suggest the DAS was involved in a 2010 assassination attempt against Victor Carranza, a major emerald magnate, and that DAS members provided right-wing paramilitary groups explosives training in 2007.
Monday was a national holiday in Colombia and calls to the ministry of interior and DAS were not immediately returned.
The DAS has been under fire since 2009, when the organization was caught wire-tapping the phones of judges, journalists and opposition politicians during the Uribe administration. Many of its functions have been farmed out to other agencies and it is slated to disappear altogether by month’s end.
In September, Colombia’s Supreme Court sentenced former DAS chief Jorge Noguera to 25 years in prison for his ties with right-wing paramilitary groups. Among the charges were that the DAS passed along the names of union organizers and academics to right-wing groups that later targeted them for murder.
jwyss@MiamiHerald.com
