Colombia: Spying on human rights defenders

"Coming to Colombia is to enter a world that is always intense, captivating and heart-wrenching at the same time," Susana Villarán, a former member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), wrote in April 2008. At the time, the former Peruvian minister was unaware that on a 2005 trip to Colombia, as IACHR Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women, she was declared a "target" of intelligence operations by the Special Strategic Intelligence Group known as the G3. The G3 was set up by the Administrative Security Department (DAS), Colombia's main intelligence agency, which answers to the president's office; according to Colombian authorities it has since been dissolved. In an Aug. 13 press release, the IACHR says the G3 "was created to monitor activities tied to the litigation of cases at the international level" - cases of serious human rights violations involving the Colombian state that are being considered by the Inter-American human rights system. In February 2009, local magazine Semana revealed that the DAS had for years carried out illegal wiretap activities against opposition politicians, human rights defenders, journalists and even Supreme Court judges. It also carried out "offensive intelligence operations"–in other words, sabotage - against them. The magazine also revealed that the DAS carried out wholesale destruction of intelligence files in January, reportedly under government orders.