Shortly after a deadly car bomb failed to kill Sen. Germán Vargas Lleras in 2005, the country’s spy agency blamed the attack on leftist guerrillas and closed the case.
But according to a cache of secret documents obtained by Semana magazine, the scandal-plagued agency may have had a hand in the plot to kill Vargas, who is now the minister of interior and one of President Juan Manuel Santos’ closest advisors.
Citing the previously undisclosed communiqués, Semana said Colombia’s Administrative Security Department, or DAS, suspected the assassination plot had been an inside job and that one of its own agents had provided the explosives.
But the agency seemed to try to cover up its involvement by blaming the attack on the FARC, pulling the lead investigator and closing the case, the magazine said.
The agency also muddied the waters by releasing a composite drawing of a suspect and telling the media at the time that it had requested the FBI’s assistance in solving the case. It later emerged that the drawing was fictional and the FBI had never been contacted.
Vargas had been a close ally to President Alvaro Uribe at the time. The magazine does not speculate why he might have been targeted by the DAS.
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