By Javier Darío Restrepo (Inter Press Service)
BOGOTA, Jun 13 (IPS) – Colombian journalist Hollman Morris phoned an international news agency and said in an agitated voice: “I am being followed by the police.”
As he left his apartment on the north side of Bogotá, he saw a police car on the other side of the street; when he reached his parents’ apartment a few minutes later, to drop off his kids, another car was parked near the building.
And when he reached the spot where he was planning to meet with this reporter, a third car with plainclothes police officers made it clear to him that orders had been given to follow him.
Ten days earlier, President Álvaro Uribe had publicly accused Morris of being an accomplice of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) because of his newspaper coverage of the release of a group of kidnapped victims by the insurgent group.
A few weeks later, Morris commented in a meeting of journalists on the “chilling” discovery of a dossier in his name that had been kept for some time by the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) – Colombia’s domestic secret police service, which answers directly to the office of the president – when its offices were searched on orders from the attorney general’s office in the midst of a scandal over widespread illegal wiretapping.
The file contained photos and information on his parents, siblings, wife and children, and on his day-to-day movements, with a level of detail that reminded those looking at it of the thorough investigations carried out by hired killers while planning their hit jobs.
Morris is one of the reporters who was targeted by the DAS, which illegally eavesdropped on a wide range of opponents of the right-wing Uribe administration. Searching through DAS computers, investigators from the attorney general’s office found that the secret police had intercepted the phone calls and e-mails of Supreme Court justices, opposition lawmakers, reporters and even the likely presidential candidate of the opposition Liberal Party, Rafael Pardo.
The ongoing scandal over illegal wiretapping operations by the DAS has led to the resignation of the director of the intelligence agency, María del Pilar Hurtado, and investigations of the last four directors as well as 30 DAS agents.
The similarities of the case with the Watergate scandal, which forced U.S. president Richard Nixon (1969-1974) to step down, have been cited by opposition figures calling on Uribe to resign – not a likely outcome, however, due to the president’s high level of popularity and Colombian society’s jaded attitude towards such scandals, which are all too common in this country.
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