Colombia
Today there might be four Coronell Reports. I have four important pieces of information to give you and a single report.
First, I want to tell you what the Foreign Ministry does not want to say regarding the absence of a representative from Colombia in a session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, OAS, which had only one item on the agenda: to approve a resolution condemning the violation of human rights by Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
Reasons to condemn the Ortega regime abound: there are persecution of the independent press, six colleagues are imprisonedothers have had to leave the country to avoid being imprisoned, there are 1,800 political prisonersthe Nicaraguan dictatorship also persecute religious freedom. Today, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, the bishop of Matagalpa who has dared to raise his voice once morest the outrages, turns 10 days in detention, without the charges being known.
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Last night, the Caracol channel disclosed the response to a right of petition exercised by the journalist Juan Carlos Merlano in which the Colombian Foreign Ministry acknowledged that the instruction to be absent from the session -that is, not to be there to condemn Nicaragua- came directly Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva.
The journalist Merlano also asked: Why was that instruction given? And the answer was that “There are delicate aspects of foreign policy that are confidential”.
The Coronell Report was able to establish what those “delicate aspects of a confidential nature” are.
Colombia is trying to negotiate with Nicaragua the application of the latest judgment of the International Court of Justice in The Hagueenacted in April this year.
What does that sentence say? that Colombia should immediately cease its patrolling, fishing and maritime investigation operations in the 75,000 square kilometers of sea that The Hague granted to Nicaragua. This happened because of a 2012 ruling, following decades of litigation.
The Hague sentence recognized Colombia’s sovereignty over San Andrés, Providencia, Santa Catalina and the keys, but it took away an enormous amount of sea.
What is Colombia aspiring to? A achieve conciliation with Nicaragua to reach a bilateral settlement that allows the Raizal fishermen of San Andrés to continue working in those waters.
In addition to the importance that this decision has for the economy of the islanders, an agreement in this regard might open the way to request the International Court of Justice to suspension of the hearing for the third caseas one of the lawsuits that is still pending is called.
From that, Colombia wants to seek a settlement outside the Court.
Those are the “delicate aspects of foreign policy that are confidential” that led Colombia not to attend the session that condemned the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
Was it justified or not? As an old song says: “The word is yours, I keep quiet out of modesty.”
Bonus track 1
The prosecutor Angélica Monsalve, who charged and has called to trial three members of the powerful Ríos Velilla family, including former councilman Felipe Ríos, is being papered over in what appears to be a new attempt to remove the case.
The protagonist of the most recent attack is a character that you know: the prosecutor delegate to the Supreme Court Gabriel Ramón Jaimes, the same one who instead of acting as prosecutor joined the defense of former President Álvaro Uribe in a shameful performance which earned him the reproach of the judge in the case and national ridicule.
Well, the prosecutor Jaimes summoned the prosecutor Angélica Monsalve to an interview regarding the statements that she delivered here on the W and on Canal Caracol where she denounced the pressures and alleged influence peddling of important personalities including Rodrigo Noguera, rector of the Sergio Arboleda University.
We’ll have to keep an eye on that.
Bonus track 2
This weekend, silently, almost clandestinely, the businessman Carlos Mattos was released from the maximum security prison de Cómbita where they had taken him following his illegal walks when he was confined in La Picota.
After enduring the cold of the Boyacá mountains for 178 days, Mattos was transferred to the warm Barranquilla. At this time he must be listening to us from a fiscal house in the cozy prison of El Bosque.
I hope you behave well.
There are many things to explain regarding his walks and regarding the people who received their payments in La Picota. It has also been forgotten that just arrived at the maximum security penitentiary of Cómbita, he received a visit from his lawyers at the time Iván Cancino and Laura Kamila Toro, whom Cancino calls his making.
Dr. Toro they seized some glasses with a hidden spy camera. What was she for? To record Mattos saying something or for Mattos to record someone?
The question was left unanswered. Now Carlos Mattos is going to need some glasses, but sunglasses.
Bonus track 3
General Henry Sanabria, director of the National Police, was disavowed by Defense Minister Iván Velásquez and President Gustavo Petro.
Last Monday, a week ago today, General Sanabria had announced the appointment of Colonel John Harvey Alzate as Director of Police Intelligence, Dipol, and Colonel Juan Miguel Thiriat as Director of the Judicial Police, Dijín.
On Friday, Julio told them that those appointments had been suddenly reversed.
Well, yesterday, Sunday, there was a new statement announcing that the director of the Dijín is now going to be the Colonel Olga Patricia Salazar and the director of Intelligence, Dipol, will be the Colonel Arnulfo Rosenberg Novoa. Both will be promoted to general in December.
The latest statement explains that the adjustments in the line of command occurred “following the review of the trajectory and the resumes of some officers of the institution by the President of the Republic, Gustavo Petro Urrego, and the Minister of the National Defense Iván Velásquez Gómez”.
I don’t recall a precedent where command line announcements of a police director have been revoked by a government (and, moreover, in less than a week).
Finally…
In the most recent column of Los Danieles, I told you that an email from Attorney General Francisco Barbosa received a anonymous complaint once morest Walfa Téllezthe wife of the prosecutor and former comptroller delegated for the environment.
The spine “Prosecutor in Trouble” explains that the prosecutor’s wife is director of a foundation that received a contract for 190 million pesos from an entity over which she had exercised authority as comptroller. The complaint seeks to establish whether Doña Walfa Téllez, Barbosa’s wife, violated the disability regime, a crime that enshrines a minimum sentence of 4 years in prison and a maximum of 12.
What was legally appropriate is for the prosecutor to declare himself impeded and the Supreme Court of Justice to rule and eventually choose a prosecutor to this.
However, in an obvious cunning move, They waited for the prosecutor to travel so that Deputy Prosecutor Martha Mancera would be in charge of the office and she will assign it to a delegate.
The assignee is a trusted man of prosecutor Francisco Barbosa. This is Javier Fernando Cárdenasthe same delegated prosecutor before the Supreme Court of Justice that is now handling the case once morest former president Álvaro Uribe.
The statement says that he is a career prosecutor. He may be a career in another position, but the position of prosecutor delegate before the Court is freely appointed and removed by the attorney general.
The prosecutor is taking advantage of his position and his authority to favor his wife Walfa Téllez in a criminal investigation.