For the third time, the Attorney General’s Office must be held accountable for the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Justice’s Criminal Chamber to overturn the case against former spy chief Jorge Noguera Cote, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, misuse of authority through an arbitrary and unjust act, and improper use of classified or secret information, the evidence for which demonstrates that the office of the Administrative Security Department was put to the service of paramilitarism.

 

 

For the third time, the Attorney General’s Office must be held accountable for the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Justice’s Criminal Chamber to overturn the case against former spy chief Jorge Noguera Cote, who has been charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, misuse of authority through an arbitrary and unjust act, and improper use of classified or secret information, the evidence for which demonstrates that the office of the Administrative Security Department was put to the service of paramilitarism.

Several other cases have already been overturned because of the Attorney General, which in the practice delays the administration of justice, encourages impunity, releases the accused person from jail, and undermines the rights of the victims. Due to this ruling, the Attorney General’s Office has lost more than two years of work and investigation. If the case’s irregularities are not corrected and the case is not decisively and urgently retaken, Mr. Noguera could be “declared innocent due to the statute of limitations,” that is the State wastes the opportunity to investigate and bring Noguera to trial for the crimes committed due to the fact it did not carry out the criminal prosecution within the terms set forth by law.

In this respect, the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective urges attorney general Mario Iguarán to immediately reopen the investigation of the case, call Noguera to provide a deposition and charge him -this time with no procedural defects or problems that allow a human rights violator to evade their political, social and legal responsibility for the acts committed, especially if it is taken into account that this person was the director of the agency that “supposedly” provides security for the Colombian State.

It should be remembered that Jorge Noguera has not only been implicated in carrying out an already demonstrated electoral fraud on the Colombian Caribbean coast, which in and of itself is very grave and casts doubt on the legitimacy of the current government, but he has also been accused of administrative corruption in several government contracts, of having put the Colombia’s principal intelligence agency to the service of the mafia and criminals, of having participated in carrying out a conspiracy to against the Venezuelan government, including the murder of state prosecutor Danilo Anderson, and -the most grave of all- of supporting paramilitary groups, including -at the very least- of turning over a list with the names of trade unionists and left-wing leaders to be murdered, as effectively happened to many of them.