“Socalj” for Borderland Beat
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The objective, apparently, was to derail the peace achieved between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas. The method set a trap for Jesús Santrich through two DEA collaborators who posed as high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, supposedly sent by Rafael Caro Quintero, and invited the former guerrilla commander to traffic cocaine to the United States. The trap worked, from Washington’s point of view, but it has no validity in the South American nation, according to Colombian legal experts.
Perhaps unintentionally, the United States Department of Justice has just officially revealed that the DEA used Mexican drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero as a decoy in a sting operation in Colombia, whose purpose was to incite Jesús Santrich to traffic cocaine, former commander of the demobilized FARC guerrilla.
In a document sent on December 1 to a US federal judge, the Department of Justice indicates that two “confidential sources” of the DEA posed as “high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel” and established contact with Santrich, who according to the accusation, he fell into the trap and agreed to participate in a business selling cocaine.
The “confidential sources” (cees) were two DEA collaborators, one of whom introduced himself to Santrich and his Colombian interlocutors as the son of Caro Quintero, and the other as a relative and member of the drug lord’s criminal organization, which according to the US agency it was the Sinaloa Cartel.
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Lawyers consulted by Proceso agree that the Justice Department document confirms that Santrich was the victim of “entrapment” (incitement to crime, something prohibited under Colombian law) and that the two Mexicans who presented themselves as members of the Sinaloa Cartel and relatives de Caro Quintero actually worked for the DEA.
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“That was a DEA entrapment operation to torpedo the peace process; this was the main objective. The Justice Department document corroborates that it was a trap in which DEA agents posed as drug traffickers,” says criminal lawyer Reynaldo Villalba.
For law professor Pablo Reyes, the document “officializes that the DEA did carry out an entrapment operation in Colombia in which the name of a well-known Mexican drug trafficker was used and in which there were DEA agents who claimed to be his relatives and that they incurred in incitement to crime, which is illegal in this country.”
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When he turned his back on the peace agreement and took up arms, many politicians on the Colombian left who had called for due process for the drug charges he faced felt betrayed.
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Santrich Assassinated in 2021
Santrich was part of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) team that negotiated peace with the government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos between 2012 and 2016 in Havana and was even a congressman when that ex-guerrilla became, in 2017, a legal political party.
In 2018, the former guerrilla was accused of violating the peace accords by negotiating a shipment of cocaine with envoys of Mexican drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, for which Santrich was sent to prison for extradition purposes to the United States.
In May 2019, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) denied the extradition and ordered the release of the former insurgent commander, who fled to Venezuela two months later. The FARC dissident, Jesús Santrich, took up arms in 2019 after accepting the peace agreement, and was killed in Venezuela by a commando, they reported Colombian security agency sources.
The death occurred under unclear circumstances, as Colombian military intelligence officials told local media that Santrich had been attacked by a rival armed group, but the organization of the dejected dissident, called FARC-Segunda Marquetalia, refuted that version.
The organization confirmed Santrich’s death through a statement posted on the internet but assured that it occurred “in an ambush carried out by commandos of the Colombian Army” on the afternoon of Monday, May 17.
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According to the armed group, which is assumed to be an insurgent organization whose main source of financing is drug trafficking and mineral smuggling from Venezuela, the attack occurred in the Perijá mountain range, in Venezuela, near the border with Colombia.
The operation, the statement said, was “by direct order” of Colombian President Iván Duque, and it took place when Santrich was traveling in a truck that was attacked with rifles and grenades.
Once Santrich was killed, “the assassins cut off the little finger of his left hand” and they were picked up at the scene “in a yellow helicopter” that returned them to Colombia, according to the version of the “FARC-Segunda Marquetalia.”
Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano said that Santrich’s death in the neighboring country would confirm that the Venezuelan government “protects narcoterrorists in its territory.” Hernández-Solarte was reportedly partnered with the Cártel de los Soles, a drug trafficking organization in Venezuela comprised of high-ranking government officials including wanted President Nicolas Maduro.
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On 26 March 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice issued charges against Marin-Arango and Hernández-Solarte, former Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, and 14 other high-ranking government officials. The following year, he also announced with Marin-Arango that the FARC was continuing their “armed struggle” despite previous peace talks.
Colombia’s current leftist President Gustavo Petro is seeking to suspend arrest orders against some of the country’s biggest criminal suspects, including at least one individual, Jobanis Villadiego, alias “Bad Boy,” who is wanted in the US on narcotics charges, as part of an ambitious plan to dismantle armed groups that have long dominated the countryside.
Source Proceso, NY Times, Proceso, Yahoo, Borderland Beat