BOGOTA, Colombia — Interpol reported today that Colombia did not tamper with computers that it says it seized during an attack on a leftist rebel camp, security officials said.
The computers contain a trove of files suggesting that senior officials in the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tried to arm and finance the guerrillas. Venezuela denies any such aid and claims Colombia faked the computer evidence.
The security officials, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the report wasn’t public yet, said the forensic study would say Colombia did not tamper with the files.
Such a conclusion would increase pressure on Venezuela’s socialist government to explain the evidence of its close cooperation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Colombia said its commandos recovered the computers from the rubble of a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador that was destroyed March 1 by Colombian forces. FARC Foreign Minister Raul Reyes and 24 others were killed in the raid.
Mr. Chavez denounced the report as “ridiculous.”
He said a “show of clowns” has surrounded the announcement by the international police agency that it found no evidence of tampering with the computers.
Colombia turned to Interpol in hopes of dispelling doubts about the authenticity of documents on the three laptops, two external hard drives and three USB memory sticks.
The forensic exam was limited to verifying whether Colombia had altered the files and correctly handled the evidence. Interpol was not asked to analyze the contents of electronic documents themselves.
More than a dozen internal rebel messages detail several years of close cooperation between top officials in Venezuela’s government and military with the FARC, including rebel training facilities on Venezuelan soil.
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