Colombia’s inspector-general ousted an outspoken opposition senator on Monday, barring her from public service for 18 years for allegedly “promoting and collaborating” with Latin America’s last remaining rebel army.
Senator Piedad Cordoba gained international notice by brokering the release of more than a dozen hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
A flamboyant Afro-Colombian, Cordoba has been a polarizing force in domestic politics and is a close ally of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez.
Cordoba, 55, has not been charged with any crime.
However, Inspector General Alejandro Ordonez is constitutionally empowered to dismiss any member of Congress by virtue of his jurisdiction over all public servants except the president and top judges.
Cordoba has been in the Senate since 1994 and last year was mentioned as a possible Nobel Peace Price candidate.
In a Twitter message she said the inspector general’s “disciplinary investigation has no legal merit whatsoever and less moral and ethical value.”
Her attorney, Ciro Quiroz, said he would immediately challenge Ordonez’s ruling but acknowledged the nability to appeal to a higher authority. Cordoba could, as an option, sue Ordonez before the Constitutional Court.
Venezuela’s president said he was “absolutely certain” of Cordoba’s innocence, calling her “a courageous woman in every sense of the word.”
Ordonez said in a statement posted on his office’s Web site that he dismissed Cordoba based on documents found on computers belonging to Raul Reyes, the FARC “foreign minister” killed in a March 2008 raid by the military on a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador.
The documents showed that Cordoba, who was identified as “Teodora de Bolivar” and “la Negra,” had “overstepped her government-authorized role” to facilitate hostage releases, Ordonez’s statement said.
It said that her behavior included advising the FARC on releasing proof-of-life messages from hostages “with the goal of favoring other governments” — presumably a reference to neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador.
In public appearances, Cordoba has often endorsed the FARC’s stated goals of a Colombia where wealth is more equally distributed.
She worked closely with Chavez — an action authorized in late 2007 by then-President Alvaro Uribe — to broker unilateral hostage releases that the rebels ended in early 2009.
The FARC, whose fighters come mostly from the ranks of poor, marginalized peasants, has been fighting to topple Colombian governments since 1964. It is classified by the US government as a foreign terrorist organization, but most Latin American nations refuse to accept that designation.
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