Gustavo Petro, the current President of Colombia, holding a decree to declassify intelligence files of the former Administrative Department of Security (DAS), Colombia's intelligence agency. Photo: EFE.
The president announced that work will begin on the declassification from now on and that care will be taken with the names that should not appear for reasons of anonymity, but that those names will not be those of the culprits.
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, signed a decree on Friday, October 17, to declassify the intelligence files of the former Administrative Department of Security (DAS), an agency that illegally spied on journalists, opposition politicians, magistrates and human rights defenders, during the government of Álvaro Uribe.
During the act of recognition of international responsibility and forgiveness of the State to the victims of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective, the Colombian president presented the new decree stating that “it begins now, the reserve of the intelligence and counterintelligence files and the reserved expenses of the extinct Administrative Department is lifted.”
The decree allows the declassification of the DAS files that rest in the General Archive of the Nation and the lifting of the reserve of intelligence, counterintelligence and reserved expenses files of the former agency.
Under the premise of “creating the institutionality of truth,” the president announced that work will begin on the declassification from now on and that care will be taken with the names that should not appear for reasons of anonymity, but that those names will not be those of the culprits.
“The declassification of the DAS files begins now. It is not until June” as planned, Petro said from the Plaza de Armas of the Casa de Nariño, the seat of government.
The event served as an ideal space to announce the decree because the president considers that the truth about each of the acts found in those files should also be made known. For the president, all the apologies for the crimes of the past have not yet been given and obstacles persist in the process to know the historical truth.
The call for non-repetition that characterized the day was not only given by the case of Members of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective Corporation, but also by each of the situations in which it has not been possible to make known the whole truth about events that have occurred in the Colombian nation. The DAS files will be a step on the road to making that truth known.
(Telesur)
