Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez speaks during a press conference at the presidential palace in Caracas, Thursday, May 15, 2008. Chavez is denounced as 'ridiculous' an Interpol report on documents that Colombia says were retrieved from the computers of slain rebels. At background, a painting depicting Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
By Gregory Wilpert
Venezuelanalysis.com
May 16, 2008
Excerpts from report:
Various computer experts around the world have examined the Interpol report more closely and many are saying that the press conference by Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble that appeared to support the Colombian government’s claims of authenticity contradicted some of the findings within the report itself.
The main problem with the computer files, according to these experts, is, as the Interpol report itself concedes, that between March 1 and 3 the Colombian anti-terrorism unit that had the files under its control did not follow standard forensic procedures for safeguarding electronic evidence and accessed the files without first making a copy of them. As such, the results of the analysis are not particularly reliable.
For example, Computer science professor Emilio Hernandez of the Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela said to Venezuelan state radio station RNV that Interpol failed to “explain that it is perfectly feasible to change files and change their dates.” That is, in the two days between the apprehension of the computer equipment and when it was turned over to forensics experts, when standard practices for preserving evidence were not observed, it could have been altered without such alterations being detectable.
Similarly, computer expert Sascha Meinrath, who is President of the Acorn Active Media Foundation, points out that the reason Interpol says it “found no evidence of tampering,” rather than that “there was no tampering” is because Interpol “cannot determine whether or not this happened, they can only look for evidence of the tampering. A smart computer administrator can reset a computer's internal clocks and make changes that would be indiscernible from actual use. As paragraphs 92-96 [of the Interpol report] make clear, this isn't particularly hard to do.”
The Interpol report notes that “one laptop computer (exhibit 28) and the two seized external hard disks (exhibits 30 and 31) contained files with erroneous date stamps, set in the future.” According to Meinrath, this fact alone puts into question whether the date stamps set in the past are accurate (before March 1, when the FARC camp was raided).
...
Colombia specialist Forrest Hylton, who is the author of the recently published history of Colombia, Evil Hour in Colombia, also expressed doubt about the authenticity of the released documents because of the language these used, which does not correspond with typical FARC communications.
For example, in one of the released documents the identity of a pseudonym is revealed. “No one would begin an important letter by identifying someone in relation to his/her pseudonym. That is not how clandestine organization works,” said Hylton.
“I can imagine this as part of a captured document that was later doctored significantly. As far as we know, these are printed documents scanned into a laptop. Why would the FARC’s second-in-command scan internal correspondence onto a laptop? To compile an archive for future historians? To write his memoirs in the future? For the benefit of the Colombian government?” added Hylton.
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Labels: Colombia, Venezuela
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe speaks during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the presidential palace in Bogota, May 17, 2008. REUTERS/Jose Miguel Gomez 
