A Continent of Dunces

Reason has prevailed, at least, in the matter of an Ecuadorian judge’s crusade against former Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos. Not on either side of the Colombia/Ecuador border, but on the part of Interpol.
Interpol issued a statement saying that the organization, which promotes cooperation among law enforcement agencies of the member nations, would not be issuing an arrest warrant for Santos, as judge Daniel Méndez requested July 3.
This whole comedy of errors can be traced back to March 1, 2008, when Colombian forces violated Ecuador’s airspace to launch an airstrike against “Raul Reyes,” the nom du guerre of Luis Edgar Devia Silva of the FARC’s Southern Bloc. The attack, dubbed “Operation Phoenix,” succeeded in both extinguishing the life of Reyes and igniting a firestorm of controversy.
Following complaints by the Ecuadorian government about both the lack of notification and the violation of sovereignty, Santos belligerently responded that, eerily reminiscent of the Bush Doctrine, Colombian sovereignty extended beyond geopolitical boundaries when it came to fighting terrorism.
Needless to say, relations between the two nations have been frosty ever since. Just when it seemed that tempers had cooled and leveler heads had prevailed, on July 3, 2009, a judge from the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbios decided to dig up the buried hatchet. At the urging of prosecutor Carlos Jiménez, judge Daniel Méndez issued an arrest warrant for Santos. The charge? The murder of an Ecuadorian national who was in the FARC encampment at the time of the airstrike.
The backlash from Colombian president Alvaro Uribe was swift and vehement. To call the rhetoric “heated” is an understatement.
With the official petition to Interpol for the capture of Santos, “rhetoric” transformed into vitriol. In what could easily be called a diatribe, Uribe condemned the judge, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, and the international community in harsh terms. “I don’t understand why, when the [Organization of American States] and the countries of the continent…come out to denounce the coup in Honduras, they maintain silence regarding the coup” perpetrated by the judge, Uribe said Friday to a crowd of supporters in Barranquilla. [Editor’s note: Please forgive the translations; they’re my own.] Uribe went so far as to call Méndez a “supporter of terrorism” and accused him of “aiding and abetting the FARC.”
Could things in this section of the Andes get much more ludicrous? It’s a terrible thing that an innocent bystander was killed—but filing an arrest warrant for a foreign government official is a pointless, futile gesture intended to do nothing more than stir up controversy. Méndez and Jiménez had to have known at the time that this Quixotic crusade was going nowhere—and if they didn’t know, then they’re hardly qualified to dabble in international criminal law.
Frankly, as far as injured parties pursuing criminal proceedings against foreign officials goes, the governments of Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan have a stronger case. One citizen in the middle of an armed camp in the middle of nowhere? One quickly runs out of legitimate reasons why he would have been caught in the crossfire.
Not that Colombia has come out clean in all this. Simply put, this nation doesn’t play nice with anyone, whether its neighbors or its nationals. When Correa accused Colombia of being influenced by its “imperialist” backers, he was right—for the wrong reasons.
Colombia—including Uribe and his likely successor in the presidency, Santos—have been very closely following in the footsteps of the US of 2000-2008. The words and phrases, the assertions of sovereignty extending beyond borders, and the “with us or against us” attitude are all strongly reminiscent of the United States following the September 11, 2001 attacks. [Look here for a note on Colombian rhetoric.]
Luckily, Interpol put a stop to this nonsense .
As explicitly stated in the third article of INTERPOL's Constitution, “It is strictly forbidden for the Organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.“ [Emphasis added.]
As noted above, the instigating parties knew from the start that this farce had no hope of succeeding. The only thing to come of it has been regional controversy. It is and always has been a transparently political move. The pretense of a desire for justice is laughable and not fooling any but the most nationalistic flag-waver and sabre-rattler.
Yet another reason why those in charge of the law shouldn’t dabble in politics.