As President Uribe visited the White House on June 29, a major scandal regarding the Colombian intelligence agency, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad), was widening daily. According to Colombia's Attorney General, over the last seven years the DAS systematically and without warrants tapped the phones and email of Colombia's major human rights groups, prominent journalists, members of the Supreme Court (including the chief justice and the judge in charge of the parapolitics investigation), opposition politicians, and the main labor federation. Not only did DAS personnel spy on their targets, they spied on their families. This includes taking photos of their children, investigating their homes, their finances, and their daily routines. DAS even wrote a detailed manual of spying methods for personnel to follow.

International and U.S.-based human rights organizations that communicated with Colombian human rights groups and journalists were also affected by this espionage, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.

This spying is even more horrifying because the DAS had a role in a government protection program for some of these individuals, many of whom regularly received death threats. Still unknown is the extent to which the DAS went beyond surveillance to dirty tricks and worse: a June 14 El Tiempo article claims that the DAS was responsible for sending a bloody doll to a José Alvear Restrepo Collective lawyer, Zoraya Gutierrez, in 2005 with a note saying, "You have a pretty daughter. Don't sacrifice her."

complete article: americas.irc-online.org/am/6253