EL ESPECTADOR, January 10, 2021
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Journalist Alberto Donadio revealed information about the alleged hiring, during the Barco administration, of an Israeli spy who counseled “elimination” of members of the UP.
“There are reasons to believe that President Barco played a determining role in the extermination of that conglomerate that was close to the Communist Party.” That is the suggestion made this Sunday by journalist Alberto Donadio in a column published on the site “Los Danieles”, in which he relates details of the alleged secret meetings that the President had with the Israeli spy Rafi Eitan during the first months of his administration, between 1986 and 1990. Eitan is the one alleged to have recommended that in order to eliminate the guerrillas, it would be necessary to eliminate the members of the Patriotic Union Party (UP).
According to Donadio, Eitan and Barco met the first time with the then-Secretary-General of the President’s Office, Germán Montoya, to “draw up a plan for getting rid of the guerrillas.” The journalist says that a high-ranking military officer was present at their second meeting. These meetings were not communicated to the Congress or the public.
Eitan’s recommendation to Barco to eliminate the members of the Patriotic Union came out of those meetings. Eitan would carry that out in exchange for a second contract for consultant fees. According to Donadio, a source, whose identity is confidential, explained that Barco had no hesitation, either ethical, moral, legal, or political, about carrying out Eitan’s suggestion.
The one who opposed it, relates the journalist, was the high-ranking military officer, not because he disagreed with the plan, but because he thought it ought to be executed by the Army and not by a foreign commando. “Barco backed down and agreed that that’s how it would go, and Eitan was left without a second contract,” states the article.
And, according to the journalist, that is how “they decided the fate of the leftist militants who had signed the peace agreement.” “As is obvious, there are no audiotapes of those meetings. But there is the testimony, which a source who was present through the whole process confided to me years later,” writes Donadio.
That same source, recounts Donadio, revealed details such as the fact that Barco, at that time, called on a then-member of the Board of Directors of Ecopetrol, Juan José Turbay, to get the company to authorize the payment of the consulting fees to the Israeli spy.
“That testimony allowed the revelation of the best-kept secret of contemporary Colombian administrations. That’s to say, the influence that a world-famed intelligence agent like Rafi Eitan had in this country,” he points out in the article.
UP requests the JEP to investigate these events
After that information was published, the Patriotic Union issued a communiqué which noted that the article “confirms the complaints we have made for decades in various national and international statements, pointing out the direct responsibility of high government officials and their Armed Forces in the decision, planning, and systematic execution of the extermination and genocide against the Patriotic Union Party and other forces of social and political opposition in Colombia.”
To this end, they asked the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to summon General Rafael Samudio Molina, who was the Minister of Defense, and other officials of that time to “explain the serious events in this complaint”. In addition, they asked that Yair Klein be summoned. Klein is another Israeli citizen who had to do with training of paramilitary groups in Colombia, and his testimony is needed in connection with “his condition as a mercenary in the genocide.”
“What is happening under this government, with the social leaders and the former combatants who signed the peace agreement, with the campesinos, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian people: they continue to murder them with the same complicity of the highest spheres of the government and the same methods. We demand the complete truth,” concludes the communiqué.
One more piece of evidence. The genocides are not spontaneous. They plan them. Military Forces have to take responsibility for carrying out the Israeli Rafi Eitan’s plan to kill all of us in the UP.
Certain officials of the @acorecolombia have a lot to say in this respect
Aída Avella E (@AidaAvellaE) January 10, 2021
Senator Aída Avella of the UP also made a statement on this issue. “One more piece of evidence. The genocides are not spontaneous. They plan them. Military Forces have to take responsibility for carrying out the Israeli Rafi Eitan’s plan to kill all of us in the UP,” she stated in her Twitter account.