Helping the Hostage-Takers: Switzerland and the Reyes Computer Files (English translation)

1 May 2008 will go down as a dark day in the history of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC. Shortly after midnight, five remote-controlled high-tech bombs struck a jungle encampment of the Colombian guerilla. The camp was located in Ecuadorian territory, 1.8 kilometers from the border. Twenty-two people were killed in the nighttime attack by the Colombian armed forces. As Colombian troops entered the camp, they found Raúl Reyes, the “Foreign Minister” of the FARC, among the dead.

Reyes was regarded as the number two man in the FARC. For most Colombians, his death was a happy event. Founded in 1964, the FARC have long since left behind any aura of Robin Hood style heroism – supposing they ever had any. The leadership of the organization is controlled by orthodox Marxists in the Soviet mold. At the latest in the 1980s, the FARC developed into a kind of criminal syndicate that by way of kidnappings, “protection” rackets, and drug trafficking generated several hundred million dollars in revenue per year and has been responsible for tens of thousands of dead. On the pretext of pursuing the class struggle, they send children into battle, mine large areas of the Colombian countryside and do not hesitate to spread terror through bombings. Thirty one countries, led by the United States, Columbia’s neighbors and the EU states – but not Switzerland – classify the FARC as a terrorist organization in the same league as Al-Qaida.

The death of Reyes was just one of many important setbacks that the Colombian government has inflicted on the narco-guerilla in the last months and years. The success of the military operations has led to a marked fall in acts of violence and contributed to the ongoing popularity of the government of President Álvaro Uribe, as even Uribe’s opponents admit. But the strike against Reyes was, nonetheless, something special: in his camp, Colombian troops seized three laptop computers, on which, in effect, the entire electronic memory of the FARC was saved. Over 11,000 documents, e-mails, photos, and strategy papers provide investigators profound insight into the inner-life of the gangster syndicate.

Switzerland, the Helpful Courier

The seizure of the computers provoked a political earthquake. What had long been merely suspected was now out in the open for all to see: the socialist governments of Ecuador and Nicaragua, as well as and above all that of the Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez, were involved up to the elbows in the sinister drug and arms dealing of the FARC. The blow was struck just as Chávez, intent on extending his influence across the South American continent, was seeking to take control of the militarily severely depleted FARC.

Caught red-handed, the South American leaders condemned the Colombian troops’ violation of the Ecuadorian border in the severest possible terms and threatened military reprisals. Chávez called for a minute of silence for the “fallen hero” Reyes on his television program “Aló Presidente” and he dispatched his tanks to the Colombian border. But for once the reality of what had occurred was more powerful than all the diversionary tactics. No one doubts any more the authenticity of the computer files, which have been checked by Interpol specialists and whose contents are collaborated by otherwise verifiable facts.

The computer files also provide information about the negotiations concerning dozens of political hostages that have been held by the FARC: among them, the recently freed Franco-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt. The Green Party politician was kidnapped in February 2002 along with her secretary Clara Rojas. She was likely the most famous hostage in the world. In Europe, over 200 support committees militated for the liberation of Betancourt and a peaceful resolution of Colombia’s “internal conflict.” The French government transformed the issue into a matter of national prestige, for which it was prepared to pay a high price: President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed to the Colombian government to release some 500 detained FARC activists in exchange for 57 hostages. France would provide asylum to the released FARC members.

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, Álvaro 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).

The Swiss Professor as Money Courier for the Guerilla

Unofficially, a high-ranking representative of the FARC has already been active in Switzerland for a long time: the above-mentioned “Lucas Gualdrón.” In reality, the man’s name is Omar Zabala. He is 39 years old and came to Switzerland as an asylum-seeker. He presently holds a permanent residency permit. The anti-terror experts of the Colombian police believe that some 80% of the activities of the FARC in Europe are conducted via Gualdrón: these activities include contacts with other terror groups and arms deals.

The EDA has always assured the Colombian government that it does not permit the FARC to have any sort of representation in Switzerland. Reyes’s computer gives the lie to such assurances. Gualdrón was in constant contact with Calmy-Rey’s envoy Gontard and also had a direct line to FARC “Foreign Minister” Reyes, with whom he regularly communicated. Gualdrón evidently enjoyed the full confidence of Reyes and he looks after Reyes’s sons who live in Europe.

As 2005 comes to a close, Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas have been hostages for nearly four years. Uribe temporarily withdraws Switzerland’s mandate to negotiate with the guerilla. Despite the peace-seeking millions from the Swiss budget, the promised “dialogue” has never gotten started. The FARC poses conditions that the Colombian state cannot possibly satisfy: a new constitution written according to the preferences of the guerilla, a renunciation of liberal free market policies, the release of all FARC prisoners. In addition, the FARC wants the government to declare an area of some 290 square kilometers to be a demilitarized zone. In the 1990s, the FARC happily used an experiment of the same kind to resupply its weapons arsenals.

Professor Gontard continues to negotiate with Lucas Gualdrón in Lausanne, now without Uribe’s blessing. In early 2006, Gualdrón notifies his chief Raúl Reyes that Gontard would like to visit him in the jungle yet again. A quarrel, he reports, has broken out among the members of the Swiss government, or Bundesrat, on the subject. Gualdrón analyzes the situation as follows: “The right-wing and, at the moment, extreme right-wing members of the government are putting pressure on the Foreign Minister, who, despite her role as the representative of her country, shows sensitivity toward our cause, which she has also demonstrated along the course of her long political career: she belongs, if you like, to the ‘furthest left’ wing of her party.” Gualdrón reports further that Gontard has told him that he is prepared to risk undertaking the journey behind Uribe’s back, traveling to Ecuador via Peru, but that the Bundesrat wants at least to have an official invitation from the FARC.

It is not clear from the documents whether the meeting requested by Gontard in fact came to pass in 2006. The EDA has declined to respond to the questions of Die Weltwoche. There is, however, indication of a jungle voyage by Gontard in spring 2007. In an e-mail on 16 June 2007, Reyes tells his representative in Lausanne about the visit. This time, however, the content of the discussions seems not to be worth mentioning for him. The guerilla leader appears rather to be amused by Gontard’s efforts to stress his alleged services. It is further indicated that Reyes gave the Swiss professor $2000, which he later delivered to Lucas Gualdrón in turn. This is the last documented function of the “neutral” Swiss mediator: namely, that of a money courier for the narco-guerilla.

As the subsequent e-mail exchanges show, the relation of Gualdrón to Gontard likewise cooled. Gualdrón writes that he is fed up with the professor’s constant telephone calls and that he told Gontard that Switzerland, with its multinationals in Colombia (Glencor, Nestlé, the banks), was pursuing a “perverse policy.” The humanitarian mission is just a façade, Gualdrón says. Gontard has “a certain sympathy for us,” Gualdrón writes, but in the last analysis he is only interested in his own personal benefit. The professor needs to have success for the good of his institute. Reyes’s response is similarly disparaging: “He [Gontard] believes that his suggestions are being taken over by the FARC as recipes for its political course of action. Obviously, he has not understood that we are a revolutionary organization.”

Prolonging the Hostage Crisis

From the standpoint of the FARC, Switzerland has served its purpose and can leave now. In summer 2007, the EDA withdraws from the negotiations. The Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez takes over. His aims are by no means humanitarian in nature, as Chávez wants to make the world believe. The correspondence on Reyes’s computer shows that the Venezuelan president promises the FARC substantial arms shipments and financial aid on the order of some $300 million. Hugo Chávez wants to integrate the guerilla force into his “Bolivarian Revolution,” which is supposed to transform the entire subcontinent from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego into one big socialist paradise according to the well-known recipes of Karl Marx and Fidel Castro.

In January 2008, Clara Rojas is released. By way of the Swiss daily Le Matin, Micheline Calmy-Rey lets it be known that “we prepared the ground that made the liberation possible.” Just how the EDA chief came to this conclusion remains a mystery. The hostage release was organized by Hugo Chávez. Switzerland has had nothing more to do with the matter for over six months. Behind closed doors, Colombian political and military leaders are of the opinion that Switzerland and France have prolonged the hostage crisis by seeking to accommodate the FARC’s attempts at extortion and placing the Colombian government under pressure.

The military strike against Raúl Reyes on 1 March 2008 represented a turning point. After the initial cries of indignation, all the governments involved – and first and foremost, Hugo Chávez – quickly took their distance from the FARC. On his TV program, Chávez, who is known for his sudden changes of opinion, declared the FARC to be “a relic of the last century that no longer has any sense nowadays.” The evidence was too glaring to be covered up by mere bluster. In exchange, Colombia refrained from making public further details from Reyes’s computer.

The FARC are internationally isolated – and they are engaged in direct negotiations with the Colombian intelligence service, the DAS. In the meanwhile, the organization’s principal demand for ending hostilities is the same that Pablo Escobar once made for turning himself in: no extradition to the USA to face drug trafficking charges.

Translation: John Rosenthal