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GUEST: Forrest Hylton, researcher in history at New York University, author of “Evil Hour in Colombia,” and frequent contributor to NACLA and New Left Review

The International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, is in the midst of an investigation of documents on a seized laptop allegedly belonging to Raul Reyes. Reyes, the leader of the Colombian rebel group, FARC, was killed by Colombian military in Ecuador on March 1st, nearly igniting a confrontation between Colombia, Ecuador and neighboring ally Venezuela. Now, a Colombian government official has voiced new accusations of collusion between FARC and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela. Speaking on condition of anonymity the official claimed that the Colombian government has proof that FARC had financial connections to a member of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly, and that the seized documents show that Venezuela’s government sought guerrilla warfare training from the leftist Colombian rebels in case of a U.S. invasion. As these new charges surface, twenty-one prominent U.S. based analysts and academics have signed an open letter to the media to state that should Interpol declare the authenticity of the files seized from FARC laptops, no links will be effectively proven between the guerrillas and the governments in question. The scholars caution the media to scrutinize Interpol’s analysis, which is expected as early as next week.

Read the Miami Herald article on the unnamed Colombian source: http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/511273.html

Read the letter signed by Forrest Hylton and other academics: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/17352