This Monday, 20 experts from the Military Criminal Prosecutor’s Office arrived at the offices of the Presidency with a court order in hand. At 8:30 am, when the work day began in the center of power in Colombia, the security team at the Casa de Nariño was informed of the surprise visit. It was an inspection of the offices to collect evidence within the framework of the investigations carried out by the jurisdiction that studies the crimes of the military and police in a case of alleged illegal interceptions in which the director of the Administrative Department of the Presidency (Dapre) is involved. ), Laura Sarabia. An inspection without precedent, which marks the desire of military justice to advance in a high-level political case that is not yet entirely in its hands.
The scandal broke out in May 2023, when Marelbys Meza, Sarabia’s family nanny, reported that she had been subjected to a polygraph test under pressure in a Presidency office, after a briefcase with cash was lost in house of President Gustavo Petro’s number two. The Prosecutor’s Office then revealed that, in addition, the Police had illegally intercepted the phones of Meza and Fabiola Ochoa, another domestic worker at Sarabia’s house. Their hypothesis was that Captain Carlos Correa and Patrolman John Freddy Morales had deceived a prosecutor to obtain an interception order against them, passing them off as members of the Clan del Golfo. The scandal was such that Petro asked his right-hand man to resign a few weeks later. The tension seemed to reach a maximum shortly after, when the former head of security for the Presidency sought to collaborate with the investigation. Before doing so, he committed suicide.
Petro himself confirmed the news through his X account. “Police Lieutenant Colonel Óscar Dávila, assigned to the security of the Presidency of the Republic, has died by suicide. Near his house he sent his driver to get a bottle of water, he left his gun on the seat and when she returned in front of him he committed suicide by shooting himself in the temple with the gun he had left,” he wrote. Although Sarabia returned to the heart of power, and time seems to leave behind the series of news that once focused the country’s attention, justice continues. The process is disputed by the ordinary justice system, which investigates and prosecutes the ordinary crimes of any person, whether military or not, and the military criminal justice system, with its history of lower sanctions for those in uniform and difficult collaboration with the ordinary justice system.
For this reason, and due to the lack of antecedents, the presence of military and police investigators in the corridors of the Palace is not minor. It is not usual for any justice to take over the offices of the Executive headquarters for an investigation; even less so for the military prison to do so. And the unprecedented thing grows given that it is not defined if the case corresponds to it, a decision that is in the hands of the Constitutional Court. Sources of that justice confirmed to this newspaper that the taking of evidentiary material in the Presidency lasted almost until 11:00 am, this Monday, a two and a half hour visit that marks the intention of showing progress, just when it is at stake is maintaining competition.
A process has been progressing in the Attorney General’s Office since May 2023, when the then prosecutor Francisco Barbosa, a strong opponent of the Government, told the country that the “chuzadas” had returned to Colombia. Led by a criminal judge from Bogotá, the process has advanced to the accusation of several crimes. In November 2023, Colonels Carlos Alberto Feria, who was head of the presidential protection office, and Elkin Augusto Gómez were arrested for abuse of public office, illegal constraint and embezzlement for use, and Mayor John Alexánder Sacristán for abusive access to a computer system. The fourth police officer investigated, Major Duván Muñoz, managed to postpone his charges for illegal restraint. In April, when the hearing finally took place, his defense argued that he should be tried by military criminal justice.
And, in parallel, this justice has advanced in its own file. Military Justice sources told EL PAÍS that, while the Constitutional Court decides, they will continue investigating. They already have interview orders ready for other Presidential officials to appear, in another sign of their intention to maintain control of the case, or at least parts of it.
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Made up of a special entity that depends on the Ministry of Defense and not the Judicial Branch, called the Special Administrative Unit of Military and Police Criminal Justice, its magistrates must not only be lawyers, but also officers of the Public Force. With headquarters in military or police installations, President Gusatvo Petro has been a great critic of the jurisdiction. In the midst of the social outbreak, he pointed out that it was not a tool to do justice in the face of police abuses: “After the massacre unleashed by the government, this: if those responsible for government homicides go to military criminal justice, then they go to impunity. “What the government wants is to have a force to kill with impunity,” he wrote on his X account in September 201210, when that justice received the jurisdiction to investigate the death of Javier Ordóñez at the hands of police officers.
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