tasco66 says on Jul 22, 2008, 11:04:
Obviously Ingrid did not read the correspondence of Jean Pierre Gontard and the Farc:
Die Weltwoche, which is in possession of extensive extracts from the Reyes e-mail communications, already cited the e-mails in its last issue (nr. 28/08). The documents do not only demonstrate the friendly relations that obtained between Gontard and the FARC leadership; they also suggest that Gontard played a role that went far beyond that of a neutral mediator. We here publish the most important passages, such that readers can judge for themselves.
On 27 August 2001, FARC "Foreign Minister" Raúl Reyes writes to the secretariat: "Along with Ricardo and Olga [two FARC commanders], carefully study the possibility of receiving from Jan Pierre the 500,000 dollars that he owes Jorge in a country other than Colombia and without witnesses." ("Jorge" is FARC commandante Mono Jojoy.)
In an e-mail sent to Jean-Pierre Gontard on 4 September, Reyes evokes his friendly sentiments toward Gontard and complains that "the Colombian government has prevented us from seeing one another in our camps as we have done so often in the past." The background to the remark: over the course of the peace negotiations, the Swiss professor had repeatedly visited the FARC and met with the most important FARC chiefs (including Alfonso Cano, who is currently the supreme commander of the FARC.) In the same e-mail to Gontard, Reyes also addresses the matter of the half million dollars: "Jorge sends you his warm regards and he proposes that one deliver the consignment [el encargo] in Panama at the end of the month, if you find this sensible, to someone he would indicate to you later on."
Gontard sends his response on 7 September: "I’ve received your messages. Thank you very much. We find that a very good suggestion. Please let us know what’s necessary to put it into action, I hope by the last week in September." A discussion now takes place among the FARC bosses about how to carry out the delivery of the cash. It is decided that in the future one will speak of "appointment books" [agendas] that Gontard should deliver "in a briefcase with a combination lock." The "Marriot" in Panama City or the "Grand Hotel" in San José, Costa Rica are considered as possible locations for the delivery. Passwords are agreed upon for Gontard and the agent who is supposed to take the briefcase from him in the hotel lobby. ("He should say that he does not have any perfume, but rather a hand cream. Our comrade will say that they are both cosmetics.")
The delivery is delayed because of security concerns. It is not that the FARC has any doubts about Gontard, but they evidently fear that he could be shadowed. Shortly before Christmas, the transaction is finally completed. On 21 December 2001, "Rychy," the FARC man responsible for receiving the cash in Costa Rica, wishes his boss Reyes "a merry Christmas and a prosperous 2002" and reports that the transfer of the money has taken place: "The stuff from Gontard [Lo de Gontard] has been received without any major mishaps. It’s been counted. It’s all there….500 in all, and I await instructions on where to take them." E-mail exchanges over the course of the following weeks contain instructions on how the money is to be divided up and where it is to be stashed. With the help of the e-mails, the authorities were in fact able to seize some $480,000 in a private apartment in Costa Rica where the money evidently had been stored away.
Colombian authorities suspect that the half a million dollars was part of the ransom money with which the pharmaceutical firm Novartis purchased the freedom of two of its employees who had been taken hostage. They accuse Gontard of having personally delivered the cash.
But the purpose of the payment is not in fact clear from the e-mail exchanges. According to press reports, the Novartis employees Hector V. and Andrei B. were kidnapped in June 2001 in Bogotá by persons posing as police officers. In July 2001 - one year after the kidnapping, but six months before the delivery of the money - they were set free. According to the media reports, however, Novartis did not merely pay half a million, but rather eight million dollars.
In any case, we know that the half million dollars was paid after the release of the hostages. It is not entirely clear whether in the end Gontard himself delivered the money. The position of Novartis and the EDA is that the professor did not serve as money courier in the hostage affair.
In light of the e-mail exchanges, it is unclear how the EDA can profess to be so sure about this. The e-mails suggest otherwise. The mere fact that Gontard is mentioned so prominently in connection with the delivery of the cash, and that he himself gives his opinion on the matter, is enough to conclude that the EDA owes the public an explanation that goes well beyond the statements it has made up till now.
Why does Gontard "owe" the FARC-capo "Mono Jojoy" a half million dollars and why is he apparently prepared to deliver the money himself? What is the purpose of the payment? Is it part of the ransom money? Is it protection money that Novartis is paying to the terrorists? Or is the payment entirely unrelated to the hostage affair?
And more fundamentally: Did the EDA know that its envoy was involved in the delivery of half a million dollars? Did the EDA-chief, Micheline Calmy-Rey, know about it? Or was the EDA kept in the dark by its own envoy?
The EDA has let it be known that it was precisely informed about every step taken by Gontard. In the case in question, it is supposed to have "loaned" Gontard’s contacts to a third party (Novartis). Furthermore, the EDA claims that it has carefully gone through that e-mail communications provided to it by Bogotá and that it has been able to clarify all the relevant questions in a declaration to the Colombian government. As the announcement of the criminal investigation makes clear, the Colombian judiciary has evidently come to different conclusions.
The Bias of Swiss Diplomacy
Just how one-sided Swiss diplomacy has been with respect to the FARC is also shown by another episode documented in the e-mail dossier. On 18 June 2007, Alfonso Cano sent an e-mail to his boss Manuel Marulanda - alias "Tirofijo" - concerning a terrible mishap. At the time, Cano was still a deputy of the since deceased FARC leader. "Good Evening, Comrade," Cano writes, "Due to a serious mix-up our unit was attacked by our own people who thought we were from the ELN [the National Liberation Army, a rival guerilla force]; the guards holding the representatives then killed eleven of the twelve hostages, because they thought they were being attacked by the army. This grave error is going to cause us enormous problems."
What had happened? In April 2002, in a daring action in the city of Cali, the FARC kidnapped twelve members of the regional parliament. The twelve men were taken off to the jungle by the narco-guerilla and since that time figured among the FARC’s most prominent hostages along with Ingrid Betancourt. But in June 2007, just as the negotiations on a "humanitarian solution" seemed to be progressing and the Colombian government had released a FARC capo as a gesture of good will, the fatal blunder took place. The guards holding the hostages were mistakenly attacked by the FARC themselves. Believing that government troops were undertaking a rescue operation, they thereupon killed eleven of the twelve parliament members in cold blood. The hostages were shot in the back. (This is the FARC’s preferred method of execution, since it always leaves open the option of claiming that hostages were killed "while trying to escape.")
The Helpers Provide Cover
Thanks to several laptop computers and hard drives that the Colombian army seized last May following a commando operation against Raúl Reyes, it is now possible precisely to reconstruct numerous of the crimes of the narco-guerilla.
The case of the murdered parliament members provides an instructive example of how the FARC have consciously manipulated world public opinion with disinformation. But what is especially serious from the Swiss point of view is that the Swiss foreign ministry - which as a rule treats official information from the Colombian government with reserve - eagerly took up the FARC propaganda. At the EDA, one apparently did not trust the constitutionally-elected government more than the terrorists.
On the very day of the massacre, FARC Chef "Tirofijo" posed three questions to his deputy Cano: "1. Can we still keep secret the described events among the guerrilleros and the civil population? 2. Are there army forces nearby, were there clashes? 3. Can we at least keep the thing secret until our comrades are free?" On the FARC chief’s assessment, one has to delay the public being informed as long as possible, but one should have a communiqué ready just in case. If the second question can be answered positively, then the solution is very simple: one will simply blame the army. "And if all that doesn’t work," Tirofijo concludes, "we will ask the families to forgive us by way of a political argument: namely, by making the government’s postponement of the humanitarian exchange [intercambio humanitario] responsible for the matter."
As the FARC internal e-mail correspondence shows, over the next few days the FARC bosses engaged in a debate about optimal disinformation. On 22 June 2007, "Tirofijo" suggests claiming that the guards retreated with the hostages upon being attacked and that several people were killed while fleeing. "Comrade Timoschenko" (a known member of the secretariat) is inclined rather to blame the President without providing any further explanation. Alfonso Cano is for leaving open the identity of the attacking forces - "at least for the moment."
This is the version that is finally chosen. The parliament members were killed in crossfire during an attack by unknown troops, the FARC claim officially. On 15 August 2007, comrade Ivan Marquez "congratulates" the secretariat "for its exceptional handling of the case of the parliament members. Even the OAS [Organization of American States] admits that there was in fact an exchange of gunfire."
The Colombian government responded to the FARC’s lies with a sharply-worded denial. But the group of international mediators - consisting of envoys from Switzerland, France and Spain - reserved judgment. The mediators condemned the killing of the hostages, but at the same time they called for the creation of an independent investigative commission and for the continuation of the "dialogue." Thereby the mediators made clear, in effect, that they trust the declarations of the government as little as those of the terrorist gang.
In an article that appeared on 13 September 2007, the Swiss daily Die Basler Zeitung summarized the attitude of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA) as follows: "The politicians kidnapped by the FARC were presumably shot by the rebels during an attack by unidentified forces. In response, Switzerland reminded the Colombian government of the necessity of negotiations and criticized army operations aimed at freeing the hostages." This is the line that the EDA under the leadership of Foreign Minister Calmy-Rey has always defended: in Colombia, there is an "internal conflict" between two equal parties, the "rebels" and the security forces. On this account, the guerilla forces are not criminals, but a social problem, which has to be solved not with arms but by "dialogue." Following Calmy-Rey’s démarche, Colombian President Uribe complained that Switzerland was placing the Colombian government on the same level as the FARC.
In fact, however, there is little to negotiate in Colombia. The government is directly elected by the people and it has to respect the country’s laws and constitution. It cannot simply set free sworn enemies of the state, murderers, kidnappers, and drug traffickers. The second central demand of the FARC - renunciation of free trade and a new constitution on the Venezuelan model - likewise cannot be fulfilled by the government without betraying its electorate in the face of extortion. Furthermore, as is clear from the internal e-mail communications of the FARC, the terror organization is not in fact looking for any solution to the hostage crisis. It knows fully well that its demands cannot be met. From the start, the aim of the exercise was simply to use the "negotiations" to assure the organization a presence on the international stage.
The terrorists knew that the family members of the hostages would not speak badly of them and would be more likely rather to put pressure on the government. The FARC-friendly Venezuelan website www.aporrea.org, for example, took pleasure in citing the mild and sympathetic words that family members of Ingrid Betancourt had for her kidnappers. The comments of the families about the Colombian government, on the other hand, were critical or even hostile. This is hardly surprising: family members of kidnapping victims are typically prepared to do anything for their loved ones - even if this means having to cooperate with the perpetrators.
The cynical calculation of the FARC was right on the mark - and not only with respect to the family members of the hostages. The extortion effort was a great success. In Europe alone, some 200 support committees were formed, which militated for the release of Ingrid Betancourt and a "peaceful solution" of the "armed conflict in Colombia." According to the logic of the support committees, the terrorists are a sort of natural phenomenon: one might complain about them or even condemn them - but the whole responsibility for the problem is placed on the government. Switzerland played the role of mediator in this "humanitarian" tragicomedy. But the official Swiss envoy was in fact anything but neutral. The internal e-mail communications of the FARC suggest that Jean-Pierre Gontard may have offered his services to the kidnappers as an advisor on how "optimally" to use the hostages and even as money courier.
Ignorance or Lies
As the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo has reported, on 27 June 2008, just a few days before the army freed Ingrid Betancourt, a hostile encounter took place in Bogotá between Colombian President �lvaro Uribe and the two negotiators, Jean-Pierre Gontard and his French counterpart Noël Saez. Uribe brought up the e-mails with the two negotiators and sharply criticized them: "That’s bad, very bad!" Uribe was particularly outraged by the meetings that the two "mediators" held with Reyes behind his back (meetings made public two weeks ago by Die Weltwoche).
The tense relationship between Switzerland and Colombia is nothing new. Officially, the Colombian government has always welcomed Switzerland’s offers of mediation. At the same time, however, it has repeatedly warned Switzerland about what it regards as indirect support for the FARC. In response to protests by the Colombian government, the EDA has consistently denied that it tolerates the presence of a representation of the terror organization in Switzerland. Last May, an EDA spokesperson said, "There is no association or structure in Switzerland that is connected to the FARC." The e-mails, however, show that Lucas Gualdrón, the Lausanne-based FARC representative for Europe, played a central role in the negotiations between Gontard and the FARC leadership. The anti-terror experts of the Colombian police believe that more the eighty percent of FARC activities in Europe are handled by Gualdrón: including contacts to other terror groups and arms deals. In the confiscated emails, there is even a case documented in which Gontard serves as money courier, delivering $2000 from Reyes to Lucas Gualdrón.
There are only two explanations for the untenable denials being offered by the EDA: either Calmy-Rey’s department did not know with whom its envoy Gontard was negotiating - or the public is being fed a lie.
http://www.weltwoche.ch/artikel/?AssetID=20495&CategoryID=100
Switzerland has played a central role in the Colombian hostage crisis as a supposedly “neutral� mediator. But the e-mail correspondence of the FARC, extracts from which are available to Die Weltwoche, shows that a solution of the hostage crisis was never in fact a priority for the FARC. The “negotiations� as such, which provided an international stage for the militarily beleaguered guerilla, were from the start an end in themselves for the FARC. The Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA), under the direction of Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, took on the role of helpful courier in the cynical game of poker being played by the guerilla and often neglected to take even the slightest distance from the FARC extortionists.
As early as June 2001, almost a year before the kidnapping of Betancourt, Lucas Gualdrón, the Lausanne-based FARC coordinator for Europe, assessed the possibility of Switzerland playing a role as mediator. In an e-mail to a superior stationed in Cuba, Gualdrón comes to a positive conclusion: “They [the Swiss] have changed their communication policy and they no longer only work low profile, but also pursue a very aggressive communication policy.� Switzerland is open to the FARC’s cause, Gualdrón reports, and ready to organize meetings “at the highest level.�
As indicated in the e-mail, Gualdrón’s assessment is based on discussions with the Geneva-based Professor Jean-Pierre Gontard. Until 2007, Gontard was co-director of the University Institute of Development Studies (IUED) in Geneva, which is co-financed by the city of Geneva and the Swiss federal government. On his own initiative, Gontard had developed contacts with the FARC and, notably, with Raúl Reyes already in the 1990s. Among the various international mediators, it is likely Gontard who had the most extensive discussions with the guerilla. The former Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss employed Gontard’s services as a “special advisor.� Under Calmy-Rey he became even the “personal advisor� of the Foreign Minister as regards the FARC.
Nonetheless, Gontard did not yet have any official mandate during the first series of peace negotiations in Colombia, which on 20 February 2002 are declared to have failed. Three days later, the FARC kidnap Ingrid Betancourt. At the beginning of March, they take twelve members of the Colombian parliament hostage. In an e-mail to the FARC secretariat, Manuel Marulanda, the number one man in the organization – a.k.a. “Commandante Tirofijo� (“Sure-Shot�) – explains the purpose of the kidnappings: “Now they [governments] are knocking on doors all over the place and looking for ways to speak with us. At the front of the line, there are the United Nations, NGOs, the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross], and human rights groups that are taking up the question of the detainees and think that they can play a useful role in obtaining their liberation. But they do not yet know the high demands that we are going to make.� “Tirfijo� makes clear in his e-mail that he is counting on a long, drawn-out process: “As you know, the dialogue and negotiations with the Pastrana government lasted three and a half years. At the end of the day, the political as well as the military results were encouraging for us….The United Nations is a symbolic organization to which no one attaches much importance any more, but it will present itself as neutral toward us and it will help us, in order to improve its image.�
In May 2002, �lvaro Uribe wins the presidential elections in Colombia. Uribe proposes to take a hard line against the narco-guerilla. Shortly after Uribe’s election, Professor Gontard meets in Cuba with Juan-Antonio, a high-ranking representative of the FARC, in order to discuss the situation. The Swiss professor tells him that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is very open toward the FARC, Juan-Antonio’s reports to his superior, and that he thinks nothing of Uribe.
A Swiss Visa
According to the e-mails of Juan-Antonio, the professor displays unabashed sympathy for the FARC and offers his advice on how optimally to use the hostages: “The new Minister of France, Dominique de Willepin [sic!], has been a personal friend of Ingrid for many years now, Gontard says, and it is the perfect time to play political games [jugadas politicas], in order to increase the rift that exists vis-à -vis the USA insofar as Colombia is concerned. One adequate measure would be to signal to France the possibility of a solution in Ingrid’s case that would deepen the contradiction and could have political benefits. For example, Ingrid could go public with a document from the FARC and present to the world a proposal that could include national reconciliation, an exchange [of prisoners] and other matters. This [document] would be published all over the world and would generate a lot of publicity. It could bring about a very rapid change in the attitude of the EU and other countries.� The last-mentioned point concerns the plans of the European Union to place the FARC on its terror list.
According to Juan-Antonio, Gontard is even prepared to obtain a Swiss visa for him, so that he can have direct contact with the ICRC, the Swiss government, and the UN. Juan-Antonio would like to undertake a European tour. Gontard warns him that outside of Switzerland and France he could encounter “legal� problems.
The FARC are pursuing one goal above all: they want to be taken off the list of terrorist organizations and recognized as a “party to an internal conflict.� Following the kidnapping of Betancourt, France has shown a certain willingness to accommodate the demand. Switzerland has no problem with it, since Switzerland has never qualified the FARC as a terrorist organization. And the EDA, now under Calmy-Rey’s leadership, has no intention of changing this position – as Gontard repeatedly assures the hostage-takers.
As one can read in a recent report of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (“Mittelfristprogramm Deza/HH Kolumbien – 2007-2009�), Switzerland regards the “armed conflict� in Colombia as a civil war: “The main actors are the armed forces (army and police), which have been equipped with the support of the USA, the paramilitary troops…and the two non-state agents of violence, the FARC and the ELN [National Liberation Army].� Hidden behind the stilted jargon, there lies a maxim that the EDA consistently applies: it places a democratically-elected, constitutional government on the same level as the narco-guerilla.
Pilot Project: “Dialogue�
At the beginning of 2003, the Swiss Federation allocates some 240 million Swiss francs (roughly $240 million) to “the promotion of peace.� Colombia is declared to be a pilot project, which is supposed to demonstrate how a conflict can be resolved through dialogue. The EDA also contributes some 500 million Swiss francs a year to SUIPPCOL: the Swiss Program for the Promotion of Peace in Colombia. SUIPPCOL is a coalition of aid agencies that are active in Colombia (including Fastenopfer, Heks, Swissaid, Amnesty International, the Working Group Swiss-Colombia, and Caritas serving as lead agency).
As clearly expressed in its communiqués and events, the attitude of SUIPPCOL to the FARC guerilla largely coincides with that of the EDA: the criminal acts of the FARC are, of course, broadly condemned, but at the same time they are relativized by reference to the attacks of the civilian paramilitary forces, which latter are described in great detail and treated as far more serious. In keeping with the doctrine that is widespread in Europe, the core of the problem is supposed to be social injustice. This formula presupposes that the guerilla enjoy substantial support among the population – a premise that Uribe’s popularity disproves – and it inverts cause and effect. The undoubtedly brutal and corrupt paramilitaries did not give rise to the guerilla; on the contrary, they are themselves clearly a consequence of the guerilla’s rise.
After his predecessor was led around by the nose for years by the guerilla over the course of fraudulent negotiations, Alvaro Uribe decides to use force. In the final analysis, he is simply trying to uphold Colombian law. (In Colombia, it is against the law even just to pay a ransom.) But the Europeans – who cling to their third-worldist dogma and insist on “dialogue� with the extortionists – put pressure on Uribe, and in spring 2004 he declares his willingness, nonetheless, to give Switzerland, France, and Spain a mandate to conduct negotiations with the FARC. Colombia is seeking to sign free trade agreements and it is important to maintain good relations with the old world.
On 29 June 2004, Jean-Pierre Gontard, the professor from Geneva, travels to the jungle encampment of Raúl Reyes. There he is received as the “personal adviser to Chancellor [sic!] Micheline Calmy-Rey.� The French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur will later describe the trip as a daring expedition. In fact, it is no more dangerous than your average vacation safari. The “Foreign Minister� of the FARC has already taken up residence on the Ecuadorian side of the border.
Raúl Reyes reports on his two-day meeting with Gontard in a detailed e-mail message to the FARC secretariat. He is obviously smitten by the Swiss, who defy the pressure of the “gringos� and regard the guerrilleros as “combatants or rebels.� Reyes notes that according to Gontard the new Swiss ambassador to the UN “Piter Maurer� belongs to the same party as the “Chancellor� [Calmy-Rey] and that both give “priority to a peaceful solution to the internal conflict in Colombia.�
According to the report, the professor also offered his services to Reyes as strategy advisor in the poker game surrounding the hostages. The three Americans that the FARC have likewise taken captive are, according to Gontard, “definitely members of the CIA, the governments represented by him have no interest in them.� On Reyes’s account, Gontard advises him, nonetheless, not to kill the three Americans and to “preserve them in very good condition, since they could still be very useful sometime in the future.� The Swiss professor reportedly tells Reyes that a FARC demand for one hundred million dollars in exchange for a six month ceasefire is realistic. And verbatim: “He says that Ingrid is a jewel [una joya] in the hands of the FARC, because she is very important for the French government.�
According to the e-mail, Gontard suggests to the FARC that as a first step they could exchange kidnapped Colombian army personnel and politicians against captured guerrilleros. Then, as a second step, they could arrange to set free Ingrid and four other hostages under the patronage of Switzerland and France. In exchange, the UN would provide the FARC a platform in Geneva. On Gontard’s estimation, this would amount to recognition of the organization as party to an armed conflict.
As concerns the FARC’s wish to have an officially accredited representative in Switzerland, Reyes notes further that Gontard was open to the idea. He would merely advise that this should be handled somewhat more discreetly than occurred previously in Mexico (when a similar initiative had to be broken off following international protests).
http://www.weltwoche.ch/artikel/?AssetID=20369&CategoryID=100
Two days after the freeing of the hostages, Swiss public radio Radio Suisse Romande (RSR) had the next big story: the rescue operation had been “an enormous masquerade,� RSR reported. According to RSR, what really happened was that US agents had “bought� the merely apparently captured FARC commander Cesar with a payment of some $20 million. Frédéric Blassel, the journalist responsible for the report, conjectured that the Colombian government wanted to divert attention from its problems by way of the staged rescue operation. Blassel’s report makes ample use of an old cliché: South Americans are corrupt and incapable of helping themselves. Although the report was merely based on the say-so of an anonymous, supposedly “reliable,� source, it would be taken over unverified by the AFP wire service and disseminated around the world. This even though there are numerous aspects of the report that should have given the AFP reason to doubt its reliability: just to start with the question mark at the end of the title – “A Bought Liberation?� – with which the RSR attempted to evade responsibility.
Thus it remains unexplained just how and when the supposedly “bought� Cesar, while being watched by nearly half the world, was supposed to receive his payment. Ingrid Betancourt was there when Cesar was taken prisoner and she is sure that his surprise was not feigned. The USA and France immediately denied the report. But it is the reaction of the Colombian Army that is especially instructive: not only did it deny that any payment had been made, but it also made public excerpts from its video footage and the background to the rescue mission.
The entire operation was set in motion a year ago. A soldier who had managed to escape following years of captivity provided valuable information about the hostage takers. Cesar was well known to the Colombian judiciary as a murderer, kidnapper, and coca baron. Investigators set their sights on Nancy Conde, one of his girlfriends. Conde was responsible for obtaining satellite telephones and shortwave radio devices from Miami. With American help, the police were able to modify the devices such that the conversations of the guerilla could be intercepted. In February, Nancy Conde was arrested and recruited as an agent. The price for her cooperation: the Colombians promised her that she would not be extradited to the United States.
The $500,000 Ransom in the Suitcase
During this same period, the Colombian army destroyed much of the FARC infrastructure in Colombia. The cadres of the organization were now manifestly operating from Ecuador and Venezuela. Because they mistrusted e-mail and telephone communications, the FARC now transmitted their most important orders by messenger. Thanks to agents who had infiltrated the organization, the Colombian intelligence agency came to know its speech codes so well that it was able to manipulate Cesar at will by way of faked orders from the highest FARC command.
After some successful test runs, the Colombians were ready to go: On 1 July, Cesar received a (supposed) order from the high command to take the hostages to a coca field, where they are to be turned over to a “friendly humanitarian organization.� The media reports about the arrival in Bogotá of mediators Jean-Pierre Gontard and Noël Sáenz and their alleged meeting with the FARC chief (which never in fact took place) provided the right ambience.
Despite all this, the Sunday edition of the Swiss tabloid Blick took up the canard from the RSR. According to Blick, Cesar and another FARC commander pocketed between $15 and $25 million. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is supposed to have offered the two FARC men political asylum: “After plastic surgery, [they will] soon be lying on the Côte d’Azur.� The source for the story: journalist Frédéric Blassel. Blassel again cites intelligence circles – and a “mediator� in the hostage affair whose name, he says, cannot be revealed.
Now, there are not so many mediators who have been involved in the affair. And in Switzerland there is only one: Professor Jean-Pierre Gontard. Gontard began his career as a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as did Frédéric Blassel. Gontard is a member of the board of directors of the Fondation Hirondelle, which Blassel helped found. (According to its by-laws, the organization is supposed to develop radio stations in the Third World that “dissipate rumors, draw attention to true facts, and avoid propaganda.�) Nonetheless, in response to a query by Die Weltwoche, Blassel insists that he has never seen Gontard. As for Gontard, he did not respond to our queries.
The Colombian police suspected that it was Gontard who was behind the conspiracy theory propagated by the Swiss radio. On Sunday, 5 July, the Colombian Defense Minister Santos made public that in late 2001 Gontard personally delivered a $500,000 ransom payment to the FARC in an earlier hostage affair.
That case concerned two kidnapped employees of the Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis. Daniel Vasella, the head of the company, has confirmed the payment of the ransom, which, however, “as far as he knows� was not delivered by Gontard. A whole series of e-mails that were seized from the computer of the recently killed FARC commander Raúl Reyes, and that are available to Die Weltwoche, contradict Vasella’s half-hearted denial. What is so striking, however, is not just the secret-agent-style delivery of the cash, but, above all, the warm tone of the e-mail exchanges between the kidnapper Raúl Reyes and Gontard. The two communicate with one another like old buddies.
In the meanwhile, the Swiss Embassy in Bogotá has prudently taken its distance from the Swiss professor: Gontard performed valuable services as a mediator, a communiqué notes, but he was never an employee of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (EDA). Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey hurried to congratulate the Colombian government on the rescue operation. Just one year earlier, she warned against taking military action and called on “both parties� to enter into dialogue. According to an EDA press release, the Colombian president is supposed to have called Calmy-Rey and thanked her for her help. Switzerland is an important trading partner, after all. And, when all is said and done, it is true in a way that the Swiss envoy did prove serviceable for the Colombian rescue operation – albeit without his being aware of it.
http://www.weltwoche.ch/artikel/?AssetID=20370&CategoryID=100
Bravo, Presidente Uribe for the perfect operation!
0 funny, 0 helpful.
