Colombian prisoner wins second round in U.S. courts

The U.S. government’s attempt to railroad Colombian political prisoner Ricardo Palmera, alias Simón Trinidad, suffered another significant setback March 26 when chief judge of the District Court for Washington, D.C., Thomas F. Hogan, was forced to recuse himself from the case after a motion filed by defense attorney Robert Tucker exposed a conspiracy between Hogan and the prosecutors.

The recusal, on what was scheduled to be the opening day of a new trial, came after it was revealed that Judge Hogan had had ex parte dealings with the prosecutors in the case. In November 2006, the U.S. government’s case against Trinidad ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. Hogan, who presided over that trial, subsequently approved a sealed (secret) motion granting prosecutors permission to interview jurors regarding their reasons for not convicting Trinidad.

Under laws governing the District of Columbia court system, if one party in a case communicates with a judge, the other side has a right to know about it and to present their side at the same time. During a pretrial hearing on March 19, while he was accusing the defense of trying to “politicize” the case, lead prosecutor Kenneth Kohl let slip his interview with the foreman from the first jury. This brought to light the attempt to conceal the interview from the defense. It meant that the judge and prosecutors were illegally working together behind the back of Trinidad’s defense attorneys.

That Hogan was actively assisting the prosecution came as no surprise. From day one of Trinidad’s first trial, Hogan showed open bias for the prosecution, giving the impression that he was presiding over a trial that could have only one outcome—condemnation of Trinidad.

The prisoner had served as a peace negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Trinidad had been kidnapped on the streets of Quito, Ecuador and then extradited from Colombia to the U.S., where he was being tried under U.S. domestic law, including the U.S. Patriot Act, for participating in the revolutionary movement in his own country.

Trinidad faced five charges of kidnapping stemming from a February 2003 incident in which a small surveillance plane flown by U.S. military contractors—the new word for mercenaries—crash-landed in territory controlled by revolutionaries in the south of Colombia. The agents—Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves—have been held captive by the FARC since that time.

Although Trinidad was not involved in the act, prosecutors tried to make it appear he was associated with the events. Thus he was charged with “conspiracy” in the matter. Throughout the original trial, Hogan’s evidentiary rulings gave the prosecutors carte blanche while severely limiting the defense, to the extent that Trinidad was the only witness on his own behalf.

Trinidad’s eloquent testimony, however, appeared to have been a key factor in dissuading enough jurors from accepting the government’s depiction of Trinidad and the FARC as “terrorists” that they withstood Hogan’s repeated pressure to reach a guilty verdict. The prosecutor’s secret interviews appeared to be a fishing expedition to find out just what Trinidad had said that swayed the jurors. With this knowledge, they could get Judge Hogan to limit similar lines of defense the second time around.

Tucker called on Hogan to disqualify himself since his “impartiality could reasonably be questioned” after he allowed the prosecution to talk to former jurors to get help with their case in retrial and then sealed the evidence so “no one would find out.” In his response to Tucker’s motion, prosecutor Kenneth Kohl admitted, “When we prosecute the case the second time, we want to make sure that the jury finds the defendant guilty. ... The government naturally wants to do its homework.”

While Hogan’s withdrawal from the case was a victory for Trinidad’s defense, it doesn’t spell the end of the U.S. government’s persecution of the prisoner or U.S. interference in Colombia. At a press conference preceding the opening of the trial, Tom Burke of the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera noted, “The fact this trial can take place at all is an affront to Colombian sovereignty. The trial is an extension of Plan Colombia—the undeclared U.S. war against the Colombian people.”

Berta Joubert Ceci of the International Action Center denounced the U.S. government’s continued support for the government of Colombia, where eight legislators allied with President Álvaro Uribe Vélez have been charged with collaborating with deadly paramilitaries. These paramilitary death squads are responsible for the displacement of millions of poor Colombians and the massacres and assassinations of human rights advocates and social and labor leaders.

“If the United States really wanted democracy and peace in the region and in Colombia in particular,” said Joubert, “it would endorse and enforce a political negotiated solution between the insurgency and the government. The humane thing to do is to have a prisoner exchange where Simón Trinidad and Sonia [Anaybe Rojas Valderrama] are returned to their country.”