IPS’s excellent Constanza Viera did a very good report (like all her reports on Colombia) on the Interpol analysis of the FARC laptops captured by the Colombian government after they invaded Ecuador and assassinated Raul Reyes in March. It notes that the laptops were interfered with in the first 48 hours after the capture, but not in the week after that. The investigation itself seems credible, with Australians and Singaporean analysts who speak no spanish running the forensic analysis on the computers. They were looking for digital timestamps, apparently, and several thousand files had been modified since the assassination by Colombian authorities.
From what I gather, and I don’t monitor the North American media particularly closely on Colombia and Venezuela issues (I prefer to read the Colombian papers and first hand reports in Spanish), this is the opposite of how it is being presented here, where the emphasis is on how the laptops have been verified to have belonged to FARC. That itself I admit is a surprise to me, though I suppose it was a missile attack and not a nuclear or fuel-air bomb that could have left equipment intact. Viera has an interesting quote from President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Having had his country invaded and attacked, he of course now has to answer to the media for his connections to the people who were killed. He says: “Ecuador does not have a border with Colombia, but with FARC” – the idea is that the border regions are under the de facto control of FARC, and Ecuador has to have relations and agreements with its neighbours. It is interesting to hear a declaration like that from a president – it is the first I’ve heard of such a thing.
