Ex-Colombian spy seduced cop to implicate judges

Bogota, Sep 6 (IANS/EFE) A former Colombian detective, who received orders from her superiors to infiltrate the Supreme Court in 2007, had seduced a national police captain to be able to carry out her mission, media reports said.

Alba Luz Florez revealed in her confession to authorities, which was published Saturday, that her superiors in the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) ordered her to spy on the magistrates and link them to activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, one of the oldest Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group active in latin America since 1964.

For her assignment, she revealed, she posed as a cosmetic salesperson, dated the police captain and became friends with two other police officers and a female janitorial employee at the high court so that she could eventually plant a small recording device under the justices’ meeting table in the court’s Full Chamber.

The three officers cooperated with her, Florez’s attorney Edgar Torres said, adding that his client infiltrated the court without knowing what the purpose of obtaining the information was or what use was subsequently made of it.

“Evidently, she was carrying out orders. She didn’t have any chance of questioning the order that her control officer gave her,” Torres said.

The national police, meanwhile, announced Saturday the start of a disciplinary investigation of the police officers who collaborated with Florez, separate from the criminal proceedings that they may face.

Florez surely “will implicate” with her testimony to prosecutors members of former president Alvaro Uribe’s administration, National Police officials and high-level officials of the DAS, an agency overseen by the office of the president, the ex-detective’s lawyer said.

The former detective will receive certain legal benefits for her confession and will become a “key witness” in the trial involving illegal eavesdropping against Colombian judges, certain opposition politicians and journalists.

–IANS/EFE