Trial of ’Fighters and Lovers’

“Ever since Colombia has been Colombia there has been political violence,” concluded Venezuelan historian Amilcar Figueroa, president alternative of the Latin American Parliament (LAP), and a witness for the defense in terror trial against seven Danes.

At stake in this second phase of court proceedings, rebegun November 14, is a precedent-setting juridical determination. Are the armed guerrilla organizations, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), terrorists or freedom fighters. If the three judges, two of them lay, conclude the former, the Danes will be found guilty of supporting terrorism.

Maximum punishment for economically supporting terrorism is ten years imprisonment. However, four years imprisonment is the most that a city court can render defendants found guilty of any crime. This trial is in Copenhagen City court jurisdiction.

In January 2006, these members of Fighters and Lovers began producing and selling t-shirts with FARC and PFLP insignias. Some of the proceeds would have gone to media projects in support of the liberationist groups.

Denmark’s intelligence police unit (PET) arrested the seven activists a month later, confiscated sale proceeds and shut down the group’s website. The state attorney charged them with violating a new anti-terror law, paragraph 114b.

Terror is defined as “terrifying a population…to destabilize or destroy a country’s or an international organization’s fundamental policies…economy or societal structure.”

The state contends that the two liberationist groups are terrorists because the EU has placed them on its terror list, following suit with the United States. The United Nations, Great Britain and the Latin American Parliament (comprised of 22 countries, including Colombia) have not so determined.

Before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US, these organizations were universally viewed as national liberation armed groups.

Defense witness Figueroa views the armed conflict in Colombia as one that adversely affects much of the region, causing losses of lives in other countries, economic and social disaster for ordinary people, the ill fate of four million Colombians who have fled the country or to other parts of Colombia, as well as the loss of over 200,000 Colombians and institutionalized use of torture.

“We seek a peaceful solution to this long-standing conflict,” he said, “and right now a delegation of FARC is meeting with Hugo Chavez, who is the chosen mediator by both sides.”

President Alvaro Uribe recently released 20 members of FARC from prison. He did not call them terrorists, said Figueroa, in an effort to establish diplomatic negotiations.

“The Danish court’s decision will have an impact on these negotiations,” said Figueroa, who is also a Caracas city councilman.

Figueroa related the history of the violent conflict since FARC was formed, in 1966. He testified that para-militarists, in the pay of plantation owners, work with many military and police units in murdering and torturing thousands of civilians.

The defense produced documentation from the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCHR), the Organization of American States Human Rights Commission (IACHR) and its court proceedings, which have sanctioned the government of Colombia, military units and para-militarists for systematic violations of human rights: extrajudicial murders, routine torture, gang rapes, disappearances; threats and violence against Colombia journalists, Colombian judges and states attorneys, who attempt to try para-militarists and military officers.

In eight court cases in this century, IACHR has found the state of Colombia guilty in massacres of unarmed civilians. In some of these atrocities, the perpetrators have tried to cast blame on FARC.

The defense asserted that Colombia is not a state run by the rule of law. Most arrests and court cases occur outside the rights of citizens. Commission of Jurists and other human rights groups inside Colombia contend that only 17% of 259,400 prisoners were handled according to juridical procedures.

Contradictions within the “Establishment”, various sectors of the wealthy, and even within the United States government are pressuring Uribe’s and Bush’s regimes to dampen military aggression and find a peaceful solution, asserted Figueroa.

Even Colombia’s state attorney has recently begun trials against some military, police officials, para-militarist and several congressmen.

Senator Mario Uribe, the President’s cousin, has stepped down from office to prepare for the case against him for collaborating with narcotic traffickers and para-militarists. The defense said that there is evidence that one-third of congress members collaborate with para-militarists.

Another defense witness, Niels Lindvig, a Danish radio reporter with 25 years experience in covering Colombia and Latin America, said that President Uribe was forced to fire his foreign minister because his family was exposed for drug trafficking. Earlier, a police chief fired 8000 policemen for collaboration with narcotic cartels. Lindvig has seen reference to a 1991 USA Defense Intelligence Agency report, which indicated that Uribe collaborated with narcotic cartels (Pablo Escobar) when he was governor of Antioquia.

Lindvig said that FARC is primarily a Marxist oriented political organization, which seeks to overthrow a ruthless government. FARC conducted a cease fire and established a political party, Patriotic Union (UP), to run in elections in the mid-late 1980s.

In just three years, 3000 to 5000 of its members, including 2000 political representatives, were murdered by para-militarists in the pay of plantation owners, and in collaboration with the military and police.

“The survivors were forced to resume armed struggle: take to the mountains or go into exile,” Lindvig said.

“FARC is not terrorist. It has committed individual acts of terrorism but that is not an integrated part of its policies or actions. The few terror acts committed are condemned by the leadership, and compensation is given to victims families. FARC couldn’t survive for four decades if it mistreated civilians,” Lindvig concluded.

The state’s case

The state attorney did not cross-examine defense witnesses rather relied on its witnesses. Her witness, Angel Rabasa, is a senior researcher for RAND Corporation, a California think tank which serves the weapons industry. It was started in 1948 by the United States Air Force and is a major strategist for US government defense and intelligence departments, and major industry.

Rabasa argued that FARC is a terrorist organization, because it kidnaps “innocent civilians,” many of whom it kills, murders many other civilians, and is a drug dealer.

The defense argued that FARC engages in three types of kidnappings: a) soldiers captured in battle; b) politicians who support or are in the pay of narcotic trafficking plantation owners; c) capitalists with one million dollars or more who refuse to pay a tax of 10% from their operations whatever their character in FARC controlled territory, about 40% of the nation.

The defense maintained that FARC acts as a sovereign government. It wears uniforms, establishes taxes, builds and operates health clinics, schools, civic councils and other infra-structures. It upholds the criteria set by the Geneva Convention of 1949, according to international juridical experts, including the Droit Internationale. It is legitimate, in popular armed conflicts, for both sides to exact taxes.

The International Commission of Jurists, an independent human rights organization of lawyers, recently concluded that 14,444 people have been kidnapped (most murdered) by government collaborating para-militarists.

Amnesty International’s 2006 report states that FARC kidnapped 200 people in 2006.

The defense argued that FARC is not a drug trafficker, although it does not prevent small farmers from growing cocaine. They are taxed as is any other producer or property owner. On the other hand, there is evidence that government and parliamentary officials, including the president, profit from large drug traffickers and their para-militarists terror actions.

Rabasa defended Plan Colombia—the $50 billion US-Colombia operation to eliminate cocaine plants and the guerrillas—with which RAND has played a role. It helps the government be “an open society” with a “free press” and an independent democratic court system, he said.

The defense introduced IACHR reports, such as #2005, paragraph 55, showing that “officers of the court are under pressure to legitimize the arrests made by military and police personnel,” which includes being arrested themselves, fired or subject to “disciplinary investigations”.

United Nation reports (among them #2005, page 25, and 2007, page 30) show that witnesses in court cases, attorneys and judges have been attacked in cases involving military and para-military terrorist units.

Both the OAS and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights have released numerable reports, as late as 2005-7, showing that journalists face threats and violence for “providing news and comment viewed as independent and even critical of the Government” (UNHCHR 2006, annex 3, page 51).

Defense attorney Torkil Hoeyer disputed the state’s witness’ credibility. In cross-examination he exposed Rabasa, a purported expert on Colombian affairs, because he was unaware of UN and OAS documentation of atrocities made by Colombian governments and the military. Furthermore, Rabasa contradicted reality by contending that FARC had never disarmed nor been a part of the legal political party UP.

In between sessions concerning FARC and PFLP, defendants expressed relief.

“The state’s case is weak and her witnesses exposed for incompetence,” said one.

Another problem facing the state is its discriminatory use of the law, exposed in a national newspaper, Politiken. It reported that another Danish organization, veterans of World War resistance movement, had donated money to the FARC, in early 2006, and sent a letter of its action to the Minister of Justice, in a challenge to the repressive terror law. The government declined to initiate action. Its terror law apparently does not apply to old heroes only to newer ones.

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 Trial to judge PFLP and solidarity activist rights

“If the Copenhagen City Court determines that the PFLP is a liberationist organization it could have a positive impact for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and worldwide,” summarized Israeli historian Ilan Pape, a defense witness for seven “Fighter and Lovers” solidarity activists charged with abetting terrorism by selling t-shirts with PFLP and FARC insignias. The police confiscated proceeds, which would have gone to media projects for these groups.

Pape gave testimony during the resumed trial sessions, November 14-16, in Copenhagen. The professor of the Arab-Israeli conflict for 25 years recently moved from his teaching job at Hafa University to head the history department at England’s Exeter University. Son of immigrant German Jews, Pape has lived his entire life in Hafa.

Pape outlined the history since the state of Israeli was established in 1948. He said that Israel has systematically ignored and violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Convention, and hundreds of UN resolutions ever since. This gives the Palestinian people legal right to defend themselves and fight for their sovereignty.

Israeli has forcefully expelled two-thirds of the Palestine population from their lands and occupied 92% of what was their country. It currently imprisons over 10,000 Palestinians, has murdered several thousands more, in addition to frequently torturing Palestinians. It denies Palestinian detainees the same civil rights of trial and defense as is granted Israelis, Pape testified.

“The West Bank is now encircled by a wall higher than the Berlin Wall, all against international law and condemned by the International Haag Court, in 2004,” said Pape.

“Former President Jimmy Carter describes Israeli as employing apartheid. And Nelsen Mandela stated that what it does is, in some ways, worse than what South Africa’s white regime did.”

In the first years of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 1967 to 1974, it did employ the use of terror, Pape said, but has since ceased this policy. Attacking armed civilians who illegal occupy Palestinian territory is a legitimate act of defense, he maintained, as are attacks upon military targets.

Pape testified that the PFLP is not a terrorist organization rather a legitimate armed and political liberation group—“a very important part of Palestinian’s lives and political process.”

“It is often impossible to divide the military from civilians as they operate so closely together, especially in the illegal settlements,” he said.

“It is Israeli that is illegal. If it did recognize international law, it could not occupy Palestinian lands granted them by the UN. Israel has systematically destroyed over 12,000 Palestinians homes. Its objective is to take over the entire country. But the PFLP recognizes the rights of two states.”

The defense introduced documentation showing that the PFLP has concentrated on military targets throughout this century. It ceased using car bombings in 2001, recognizing them to be imprecise and a cause of harm to innocent civilians. PFLP also builds and runs social programs where Palestinians live, and participates in local and national elections.

In October 2005, the PFLP won 50 seats on local councils, and later that year won 4% of the votes in the legislative council election, giving it three seats. It is the third largest parliamentary party after Hamas and Fatah.

Ole Sippel, a Danish television journalist with 40 years experience in the field, many of them in Israel-Palestine and throughout the Middle East, testified for the defense.

“The occupied settlements are a main cause of the increased violence. There are 140 settlements now in and around the West Bank. Many of these civilians are in the army reserves, are well armed and often conduct unprovoked attacks upon Palestinians. The military protects them but not the Palestinians,” Sippel said.

Sippel knows many members and leaders of the PFLP.

“PFLP does not use terror as an integrated policy. It answers in kind to Israeli liquidation of Palestinian leaders,” he said, in answer to the Israeli accusation that it was a terrorist act when PFLP liquidated its tourist minister, Rehawam Zeevi, on October 17, 2001.

PFLP chose Zeevi because he was a key member of the Israeli cabinet and co-responsible for security forces’ illegal and brutal attacks upon Palestinians. It was also an act of revenge for Israel’s assassination—two months before—of PFLP general secretary, Abu Ali Mustafa, who had recently replaced its ailing founder, George Habash.

Israel arrested four PFLP members in connection with Zeevi’s death. US and UK forces took them to a jail in Jericho. In March, 2006, Israel’s military attacked the jail and kidnapped the four.

The state’s case
Once again state’s attorney Lone Damgaard chose not to cross-examine the defense witnesses, part of a “tactic”, she said.

Her witness, Reuven Paz, was employed from 1971 to 1994 by Israeli General Security Service, both as a researcher and with 17 years in the field. He has since started his own research consulting firm specializing on Middle East affairs.

The Israeli human rights organization, Bt´selem, and Amnesty International criticize the IGSS for using torture in interrogation of Palestinian detainees.

Paz read his statement, in which he characterized PFLP as a terrorist organization. Much of his testimony concerned its hijackings in its early years, which it ceased in 1974. Most civilians killed since were armed settlers in the illegally occupied territories, although Paz considered these killings as terrorist acts.

Paz admitted that, unlike other Palestinians resistance groups, or, in his words, terrorist organizations, the PFLP is secular and is not financed by other countries or outside groups.

On cross-examination, Paz conceded that PFLP central command members denounce the use of suicide bombings, of which a handful has occurred by young PFLP members acting on their own.

Defense attorney Torkil Hoeyer asked Paz to explain why Israel is willing to negotiate and cooperate with Fatah—which forms part of the PLO alongside PFLP—even though it is also characterized by Israel and the EU as a terrorist organization.

“I don’t know,” he replied. Nor did the Middle East affairs expert know or remember if Israel violated basic human rights and civil liberties of Palestinians.

“I am not an expert on international law…The United Nations works out of political interests,” implying that Israel need not abide by it or the Geneva Convention.

Tomorrow, the Copenhagen City Court will hear a Danish intelligence police and army analyst report on the PFLP. His testimony will be held behind closed doors but will later be read to the interested public and media. The three-panel court should render a verdict later tomorrow.

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 Copenhagen City Court terror trial verdict postponed

“This trial is the first of its kind. It is not easy to decide what constitutes terror,” State Attorney Lone Damgaard summarized in her closing argument before Copenhagen City Court.

Nevertheless, she did not hesitate in recommending prison terms of two to nine months for the seven defendants, Danish activists who produced and sold t-shirts with FARC and PFLP insignias. Some of the proceeds would have gone to media projects in support of the liberationist groups.

Following closing arguments, Judge Ulrik Stage-Nielsen postponed a verdict until the three-panel court can reflect on evidence. A verdict will be forthcoming on December 13.

Background

Denmark’s intelligence police unit (PET) arrested the seven in February 2006, confiscated sale proceeds and shut down the group’s website. The Ministry of Justice charged them with violating a new anti-terror law, paragraph 114b.

Terror is defined as “terrifying a population…to destabilize or destroy a country’s or an international organization’s fundamental policies…economy or societal structure.”

Maximum punishment for economically supporting terrorism is ten years imprisonment. However, four years imprisonment is the most that a city court can render defendants found guilty of any crime.

The state contends that the two liberationist groups are terrorists. EU placed them on its terror list, following suit with the United States. The United Nations, Great Britain and the Latin American Parliament (comprised of 22 countries, including Colombia) have not so determined.

The terror list is not judicial proof. That, then, is the unprecedented task of this lower court: to legally determine the status of FARC and PFLP. Whatever the verdict, appeals to higher courts are likely.

Final court session

The state attorney built her case entirely on partisan witnesses—all employees of private or state institutions working for the United States government, the Israeli government and PET.

The prosecution’s final witness, an undisclosed PET and army intelligence analyst, testified behind closed doors about the report he made on FARC and PFLP as terrorist organizations. His statement was read to a reopened courtroom. The secret agent’s sources were all second hand. He had never been to Palestine or Colombia, but he declined to state if he had been to Israel.

Neither he, the state’s other witnesses, nor the state attorney considered the actions of FARC and PFLP within the context of Colombia or Israel realities.

Damgaard said that killing soldiers and police is as much terrorism as killing unarmed civilians. The fact that both FARC and PFLP admittedly seek to alter the societal structure with violence is adequate to find them guilty.

Torkil Hoeyer and Helle Jensen, attorneys for the defense, argued that any judgment must be determined within the context of reality in the countries where FARC and PFLP are fighting.

Hoeyer and Jensen said that their clients should be found innocent. Two of them had not produced or sold t-shirts rather had set up placards or acted as a homepage server. None of the defendants view FARC and PFLP as terrorists rather as liberation fighters seeking to free their people from tyrannical governments, and, in the case of Israel, from a state which systematically violates 250 United Nation resolutions, and is judged to be an illegal occupier of Palestine by the International Court of Justice.

Furthermore, the defense said that no money was delivered since PET had confiscated proceeds.

The defense contends that EU’s terror list is compiled in counter-distinction to all rules of law. The commission members are undisclosed as is their determining criteria for what constitutes terror, and those accused have no opportunity of dispute. Although the list is not introduced as evidence, the case would never have been drawn had the organizations not been placed on the list.

Defendants’ final comments

Defendants offered final comments to a packed courtroom. One of the defendant supporters was Mikael Schølardt’s 88 year-old mother-in-law, who had been a resistance fighter under Nazi-occupied Danmark.

Other supporters overflowed onto the hallway while five local union standard bearers raised their banners outside the courthouse. One of a dozen local union supporters had just presented Fighters and Lovers with its cultural prize.

No state supporters were present in the audience.

Schølardt told the court that RAND Corporation, which sent its researcher Angel Rabasa to witness for the state, is all but “independent”, having been a major military strategist think tank for the genocidal United States war against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, as it is today for US wars against the Middle East, against Palestinians and Colombians.

He said that courageous people resisting Colombia state tyranny, among them ordinary people not involved in armed struggle, will be let down if the Danish government’s terror law is upheld against FARC.

“This is an attempt by Minister of Justice Lene Espersen to shut up ordinary people’s solidarity with decency.”

State witness lies

During court sessions, November 14-16, both sides had introduced their cases.

In this final session, Rabasa was challenged by the defense for incredibility and incompetence.

The purported expert on Colombian affairs had named people whom he said FARC had murdered.

Torkil Hoeyer showed that several of those, including parliamentarians Jorge Eduardo Gechem, Consuelo González de Perdomo and Orlando Beltrán Cuéllar, were still alive. This is confirmed by articles in the Colombia press, relatives, military and parliamentary statements.

Danish reporter Niels Lindvig contested another claim by Rabasa, that Colombia’s press is free. Lindvig said that several journalists have been murdered by paramilitarists, and that just weeks ago a Miami-based journalist, Gonzalo Guillén, fled Colombia after receiving 24 death threats within one day. President Uribe had endangered his life in a September 30 public statement, in which he claimed that Guillén had “mistreated” him in articles and was behind a book by the mistress of narcotic cartel head, Pablo Escobar, with whom Uribe had had political and economic ties.

Another key discrepancy was Rabasa’s testimony that he was certain that FARC never laid down its weapons in a cease fire and had no relationship with the political party UP. Hoeyer introduced a quotation from Rabasa’s 2001 book, “Colombia Labyrinth”, chapter seven, page 71:

“A truce with the FARC and parts of the ELN was in effect from 1984 to 1987. The FARC established a political front, the Patriotic Union (UP), which contested the 1986 election and elected 14 senators and congressmen and scores of council members. However, the agreement unraveled amid mutual recriminations and assassinations of UP officials.”

Rabasa also had claimed that his work was independent of any government and military institution. Rand’s homepage announcement of his book (co-authored with Peter Chalk) states: “The research described in this report was performed under the auspices of RAND’s Project AIR FORCE.”