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NEW YORK, USA – Colombian intelligence intercepted thousands of emails between the FARC rebel group and journalists covering peace talks in Havana, the Spanish-language television network Univision reported Friday, February 14.
The Miami-based network, which cited no sources, said it had obtained access to hacked email accounts belonging to two spokesmen for the leftist guerrilla movement.
“The collection of intercepted email which Univision had exclusive access to includes more than 2,600 communications between Hermes Aguilar and Bernardo Salcedo – both FARC spokesmen in Cuba – and journalists,” Univision said.
Most of the communications involved requests for interviews or general information about the peace talks between the Colombian rebel group and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos, which have began in November 2012.
At least three of the messages were sent by Agence France-Presse journalists to FARC spokesmen in Havana and Oslo, an Univision journalist who worked on the story, Casto Ocando, said. He said they were in the database obtained by Univision.
Among the database of 2,638 emails were communications from journalists from other international news agencies such as Reuters, Prensa Latina, EFE and DPA, as well as from European and Latin American news media like El Tiempo of Colombia, Spain’s TVE television, and the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
The Univision report comes a week after the Bogota magazine Semana revealed that an electronic eavesdropping unit within the Colombian military had spied on the communications of President Santos’s own government peace negotiators in Havana.
The disclosures touched off a political scandal in Colombia, with Santos declaring that the spying was “totally unacceptable” and warning that “dark forces” were intent on sabotaging the peace process.
Two Colombian military intelligence chiefs were relieved of their duties and the attorney general’s office has opened an investigation.
In Havana, the FARC’s chief negotiator Ivan Marquez said Friday the revelations had caused “great annoyance.”
He spoke at the end of the latest round of talks, which aim to find a political resolution to the 50-year-old insurgency, Latin America’s oldest civil war.
Over the weekend, the FARC, which has between 7,000 and 8,000 fighters, accused the Santos government of only pretending to denounce the spying in order to blunt the impact of the revelations. – Rappler.com
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