A man looks at a huge fake computer with an image of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (R) in Caracas May 15, 2008. REUTERS/Edwin Montilva (VENEZUELA)
By Daniel Denvir
NACLA
May 23, 2008
A series of photos allegedly found on the laptops of Raúl Reyes, the FARC leader killed when the Colombian government bombed and raided a FARC encampment across the Ecuadoran border, appear to have actually been taken by Colombian intelligence agents—or by allied police or intelligence agents—in Quito, Ecuador. The photos were supplied to the Bogota daily El Tiempo by an anonymous Colombian intelligence source on Monday March 3, just two days after the raid on the encampment.
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After weeks of contradictory and incomplete answers from El Tiempo, I traveled from Quito to their Bogotá office to ask some questions in person. El Tiempo reporters had at first confirmed that the photos were from the FARC laptops and were unsure of why they were removed from El Tiempo’s Web site. El Tiempo Justice editor Jhon Torres then told me that they were not from the laptop and that a retraction had been issued. (I was unable to find a retraction in any of El Tiempo’s March or April archives. Journalistic ethics require news outlets to issue corrections if doubts emerge as to the validity of evidence used to support an article.)
In an interview this past Tuesday, Torres told me that the photos were removed from the Web site because of doubts that they were really found on the FARC laptops. According to Torres, however, their intelligence source has not changed his claim that the photos are from the laptops.
Torres also claimed that all of the people captured in the CCB photos were also in photos found on Reyes’ laptops. I was unable to confirm this through a review of photos that have been released, and Torres was unable to provide me with photos confirming this statement.
Torres played down the notion that the Colombian government purposely leaked false information, hypothesizing the photos’ inclusion to be an accidental “infection” and characterizing their intelligence source as a lone actor rather than part of a media campaign orchestrated by the Colombian government.
Torres also confirmed that El Tiempo has not issued any retractions regarding the photos—contradicting his earlier statement—saying that they simply removed them from the Web site. This even though the paper ran a story on March 7 titled “Trace of ETA in Reyes’ PC,” including the photo of Batasuna members Walter Wendelin and Iñak Gil at the CCB conference...
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