The Clues to the Crimes are in the Computers
 

Carlos Alberto Montaner

It is a political earthquake that is rattling the entire Andean region. Raúl Reyes' three laptops contain irrefutable evidence of the crimes committed by the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador against Colombia. Raúl Reyes was the alias used by Luis E. Devia-Silva, the bloodthirsty commander of the Colombian FARC killed at age 60 after an incursion by the Colombian Army into a camp the communist guerrillas had established in Ecuadorean territory. During the operation, the laptops were seized.

What are those crimes? There are several. The worst are complicity in the first degree with armed bands engaged in murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, robbery and forcible pederasty, which is the technical name for child rape. The less-than-worst are the illegal funding of electoral campaigns, malversation, subornation, and prevarication, which is the deliberate disobedience of the law. What penal codes determine that those actions constitute crimes? All of them. Those of Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia -- the victimized country -- as well as the international accords signed by the three countries at the O.A.S. and the U.N.

The theory that the laptops owned by the slain narcoterrorist were manipulated by the Colombian government is stupid. Any expert in computer science knows that any mail sent through the Internet leaves a series of indelible tracks on the Web and on the program that was used to send it. An examination of those tracks is as accurate as a DNA analysis. What Reyes' computers recorded was what the guerrilla wrote on the dates found in the hard disc. There is no manipulation or error that cannot possibly be discovered.

Confronted with these findings endorsed by the Interpol, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who was found with his thumb in the pie, defends himself with a shrewd dialectical trick that is well known by criminal lawyers, even if they acknowledge its minimal efficacy. If we are to believe Raúl Reyes' words when he communicates with another terrorist, why shouldn't we believe him when he accuses the government of Álvaro Uribe of maintaining links with paramilitaries and drug traffickers?

For a very simple reason. When Raúl Reyes accuses his enemy, Uribe, of being a drug trafficker or a murderer, he clearly intends to discredit him and manipulate public opinion. On the other hand, when he communicates with a comrade in arms, his purpose is to inform him carefully about certain issues that are important for everyone's survival. The fact that a person lies once does not mean that he lies always. It was convenient for Raúl Reyes to lie when he spoke publicly about Uribe, but it was not convenient for him to lie when he spoke privately to another guerrilla commander about Hugo Chávez's or Correa's carryings-on.

The criminal and political consequences of Raúl Reyes' laptops, when they're felt, could be extremely severe. Less-serious accusations sent two Ecuadorean presidents -- Jamil Mahuad and Abdalá Bucaram -- and a vice president -- Alberto Dahik -- scampering into exile. In 1993, Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez was removed from his post and put under house arrest for something that wasn't even a crime: the use of secret presidential funds to protect the enfeebled government of Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro.

Why and when were these politicians punished? When they clearly fell in disfavor with public opinion and left their jugular exposed to the fangs of their adversaries. So, already on the table are all the elements needed to predict where the shots will be fired in Ecuador and Venezuela. One day, the ghost of Raúl Reyes will rise from his grave as a virtual witness against his former friends Correa and Chávez, and will help to destroy them. That's life in that helter-skelter Latin American world where politics is, in effect, a grisly brawl with switchblades.

Mayo 30, 2008

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