Contacts with rebels were authorized, Colombian lawmaker says

Bogota, Agency
Vowing to fight a decision by the Colombian Inspector General's Office to remove her from Congress and bar her from public office for 18 years for "collaboration" with leftist rebels, opposition Sen. Piedad Cordoba said Tuesday that all her contacts with the insurgents were authorized by the government.

The Liberal Party lawmaker plans to bring the case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, she told a press conference in Bogota.

Cordoba, who has helped broker the unilateral release of a dozen prisoners held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, since early 2008, said her meetings with rebels were authorized by the Colombian government.

The senator recounted visiting two FARC members in U.S. prisons as well as her "first and only meeting" with the guerrillas' second-in-command, the late Raul Reyes.

Cordoba noted that it was she who provided authorities a videotape of her talks with Reyes, killed in a March 2008 raid on a FARC camp just inside neighboring Ecuador.

The legislator has steadfastly denied any improprieties in her contacts with the FARC to arrange the release of some of the politicians, police and soldiers the rebels were holding in the hope of trading them for jailed guerrillas.

The investigation of Cordoba, an Afro-Colombian representing the impoverished northwestern province of Choco, was based on data Colombian officials said they found on Reyes' laptop computers after his death.

The probe also drew on testimony from informants and information gleaned from wiretaps, the IG's office said.

Leader of a group called Colombians for Peace, the senator was a frequent critic of President Alvaro Uribe, who left office last month after two four-year terms.

"I don't agree with this decision because it is criminalizing humanitarian work," Cordoba said Tuesday.

"Peace cannot be left to the whims of someone or other," she said, vowing to continue working for the freedom of captives still in FARC hands and for a political solution to Colombia's decades-long conflict.

The decision to oust Cordoba from the Senate was criticized Tuesday by several of the erstwhile FARC captives freed in the context of her mediation efforts, including Congressman Orlando Beltran and provincial lawmaker Sigifredo Lopez.

"To be a promoter of peace, one has to talk to the bandits," Lopez said.

The Liberal Party said in a statement it "regrets" the action of the IG's office, insisting Cordoba's actions on behalf of freeing prisoners "had the authorization of the then-government and the support" of Liberal leaders.

But the leader of the leftist PDA party spoke out more forcefully, calling the moves against Cordoba a criminalization of dissent.

Clara Lopez also suggested the harsh sanction was retaliation for Cordoba's recently telling the European Parliament that Colombia is a "giant mass grave."

The beleaguered senator received public support from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - briefly Cordoba's partner in mediation - and from the leaders of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez; Ecuador, Rafael Correa; and Bolivia, Evo Morales.

"This action contrary to reason is one more example of the political persecution that has been advanced against me in the last 12 years," Cordoba said in a statement posted on her Web site hours after Monday's announcement from the IG's office.

The senator went on to cite her kidnapping by right-wing paramilitaries, a period of exile prompted by death threats and revelations that she was among dozens of people illegally spied on by Colombia's DAS security service.