VZCZCXRO3666
OO RUEHRG
DE RUEHBR #1910/01 2551320
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
O 121320Z SEP 06
FM AMEMBASSY BRASILIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6608
INFO RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION PRIORITY 5652
RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA PRIORITY 3918
RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES PRIORITY 4256
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS PRIORITY 3427
RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE PRIORITY 5410
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO PRIORITY 2830
RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO PRIORITY 7982
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUMIAAA/USCINCSO MIAMI FL PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC PRIORITY
USMISSION USUN PRIORITY
USMISSION GENEVA PRIORTY

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BRASILIA 001910 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
C O R R E C T E D COPY - INFO ADDRESSEES ADDED 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/25/2016 
TAGS: PREL PTER SNAR BR
SUBJECT: BRAZIL: GOB OFFICIALS COMMENT ON REFUGEE CASE OF 
SUSPECTED FARC TERRORIST 
 
REF: A. STATE 139878 
     ¶B. BRASILIA 1511 
     ¶C. BRASILIA 1613 
 
BRASILIA 00001910  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR DENNIS HEARNE. REASONS: 1.4 (B)(D). 
 
¶1. (S/NF) Summary. Charge and PolCouns delivered ref A 
demarche to senior GOB officials, stressing USG concerns 
about the 14 July 2006 decision by Brazil's national refugee 
commission (CONARE) to grant refugee status to suspected FARC 
terrorist Francisco Antonio Cadena Collazos (refs B and D), 
despite an outstanding extradition request for Cadena from 
Colombia's government (GOC) and Brazil's obligation to deny 
safe haven to terrorist under United Nations Security Council 
Resolution 1373.  Under Secretary for Political Affairs 
Antonio de Aguiar Patriota and other senior Ministry of 
External Relations (MRE) officials said the decision by 
CONARE had been complex and laborious, with "humanitarian" 
factors weighing heavily.  They indicated CONARE, with strong 
encouragement from the UNHCR representative, had not regarded 
Cadena as a "terrorist" but as a refugee from an "internal 
armed conflict," which they claim is the approach that 
consistently has been taken by CONARE to more than 300 other 
Colombians settled in Brazil as refugees.  Luiz Paulo 
Barreto, CONARE's president and the second-ranking official 
in Brazil's Justice Ministry, told PolCouns that the 
committee had deliberated for nearly a year (vice the 30 days 
typical in other refugee cases), had considered the GOC legal 
case against Cadena as weak, saw the timing of the 2005 
extradition request for Cadena (who has lived in Brazil since 
1992) as driven by election politics in Colombia, and had 
researched Cadena's history in vain for any indication that 
he was a FARC military commander instead of the ideological 
commissar, priest and political representative he claims to 
be.  Despite credible reporting to the contrary, Barreto 
denied there had been political pressure on CONARE to grant 
refugee protection to Cadena, and said he would be prepared 
to revoke Cadena's refugee status "in a minute" if (1) Cadena 
is caught in a lie in his petition, (2) does not fulfill the 
conditions of his status, (3) the GOC appeals to CONARE with 
compelling additional information.  Barreto also said he 
would be willing to personally receive and assume 
responsibility for protecting any USG intelligence 
information regarding Cadena that has a bearing on his 
refugee claim and his history with the FARC in Colombia.  End 
summary. 
 
 
Foreign Ministry Demarches 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) DCM (serving as Charge at the time) made ref A 
demarche to Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, MRE Under 
Secretary for Political Affairs, on 4 September.  DCM 
 
SIPDIS 
stressed that the CONARE decision appeared at odds with 
Brazilian commitments under UNSCR 1371.  Patriota did not 
appear to be very familiar with the details of the Cadena 
decision, but indicated he had discussed it with Foreign 
Minister Amorim and others. He said that, according to the 
MRE representative in CONARE, the UNHCR representative in 
CONARE had pressed hard to grant refugee status, in what had 
been an extensive and "impassioned" process in the 
commission.  He noted that some of the key considerations 
were "humanitarian" -- i.e., that Cadena has lived in Brazil 
peacefully for over 15 years and has a Brazilian wife and 
child. 
 
¶3. (SBU) PolCouns followed up with a second demarche on 5 
September to the MRE's Assistant Secretary for International 
Organizations, Ambassador Maria Luiza Veotti.  Veotti was 
joined by Marcus Fagundes, Chief of the OAS Division and an 
alternate representative for the ministry on the CONARE 
board.  PolCouns emphasized that the USG had no intent to 
interfere in Brazilian legal processes, but noted USG dismay 
with the Cadena decision and questioned how the GOB could 
square this decision in view of its obligations under UNSCR 
¶1371. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Veotti emphasized that CONARE classified Cadena as a 
refugee, and is not a beneficiary of political asylum. 
Refugee status is granted solely and independently by CONARE, 
 
BRASILIA 00001910  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
which includes GOB representatives from the justice and 
foreign ministries, as well as UNHCR and civil society and 
faith-based NGOs.  Political asylum is a national process, in 
which the GOB would be directly involved, but Cadena's 
request was for refugee status, and was sent to CONARE.  As a 
refugee in Brazil, Veotti affirmed that Cadena cannot be 
extradited, and the judiciary's role at this stage is 
essentially passive, she said.  If refugee status is revoked 
for any reason by CONARE, extradition can again be 
contemplated by the courts. Veotti reiterated Patriota's 
description of the CONARE deliberation as a laborious one in 
which humanitarian issues emerged as paramount.  She said it 
was important to note that CONARE "never defined or 
characterized Cadena as a terrorist," but rather as a 
Colombian "involved or affected by the internal armed 
conflict in his country, and who feared death, harm or 
persecution, in accordance with the 1951 UN definition on 
which CONARE bases its proceedings. "   This is the same 
context in which CONARE has approached other Colombian 
refugee seekers in Brazil, she added.    PolCouns noted that 
he would be seeing the president of the CONARE board that 
adjudicated Cadena's appeal, and Veotti urged poloff to seek 
more detailed clarifications in that meeting. 
 
 
CONARE President 
---------------- 
 
¶5. (C) Justice Ministry Executive Secretary (Deputy 
Minister-equivalent) Luiz Paulo Barreto met with PolCouns on 
6 September to receive ref a demarche and discuss the Cadena 
issue.  Barreto, in addition to being the senior career legal 
officer at the ministry, is the President of CONARE and 
chairs its deliberations.  Barreto is a long-time and 
cooperative contact of the Embassy on a range of law 
enforcement and counter-terrorism issues.  Requesting 
confidentiality on our part, and breaking the official 
 
SIPDIS 
silence that normally surrounds CONARE decisions on refugees, 
he outlined the factors weighing in CONARE's handling of 
Cadena's refugee appeal: 
 
--  Barreto said the committee regarded the GOC allegation 
and extradition request against Cadena as legally specious. 
Noting that the crime alleged had been committed in 1991, and 
that the extradition request to Brazil had been lodged only 
in 2005, Barreto claimed the case appeared to hinge entirely 
on the testimony of one recently-revealed witness, who 
Brazilian sources indicate has had his sentence reduced in 
Colombia and received financial compensation in exchange for 
accusing Cadena.    CONARE interviewed Cadena extensively, 
and he denied the murder allegations and claimed that he was 
in Venezuela on the date of the 1991 attack on the Colombian 
National Police base in which the murders occurred.  Barreto 
acknowledged that Cadena had no one to corroborate his 
denials. 
 
-- Barreto said CONARE viewed the GOC's interest and timing 
in pursuing Cadena's extradition as being driven by domestic 
political factors in Colombia.  Barreto said that Cadena had 
resided in Brazil since 1992, but that during that time he 
had returned on occasion to Colombia, in some cases with the 
consent of the GOC.   Barreto said the GOB had official 
information, supported by Cadena's own testimony, that Cadena 
has occasionally served in a negotiator role between the GOC 
and FARC, most recently in 2000.   CONARE questioned why 
previous GOC administrations had seemed to regard Cadena as 
innocuous or even tacitly supported his role as a dialogue 
facilitator, allowing him to enter and leave Colombian 
territory, but the Uribe government -- in an election year -- 
had suddenly sought extradition.   Barreto claimed that the 
GOC and Colombian Embassy's interventions with CONARE 
regarding the case had virtually ceased when Uribe was 
re-elected.  (Comment: That is a specious argument given the 
fact that refugee status was granted to Cadena less than 2 
months after Uribe's re-election.  End comment.) 
 
-- Barreto said the GOB, including its intelligence service 
and military, had assisted CONARE over several months in 
"exhaustively researching" Cadena's history in Colombia with 
the FARC, and had found no information that supported GOC 
allegations that Cadena was a FARC field commander capable of 
 
BRASILIA 00001910  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
leading an attack on a military base.   Cadena claims to have 
been a political commissar, teacher, and priest for FARC in 
Colombia, and later an informal representative for the group 
in Brazil, but not a combatant, much less a commander. 
Barreto claimed the information developed by CONARE and the 
GOB could not disprove that position (he noted the only 
picture the GOB had obtained of Cadena in FARC uniform is 30 
years old and shows him holding a bible in one hand and a gun 
in the other). 
 
-- Barreto noted that there are 350 Colombians living in 
refugee status in Brazil, re-settled after successfully 
convincing CONARE that they faced threats related to the 
country's internal conflict if they returned.  Some have been 
resettled at GOC requests, others have applied for refugee 
status on their own, and they come from the ranks of the 
Colombian security forces, paramilitaries and guerrillas, as 
well as ordinary citizens.  These include, Barreto said by 
way of a contrasting example to Cadena, two former Colombian 
army soldiers who killed FARC commanders during a fire fight, 
but who could not be guaranteed safety from reprisals by the 
GOC once they demobilized.    Noting that CONARE took nine 
months to consider the Cadena case - versus the one month 
timeframe for most refugee decisions - Barreto said the 
committee had painstakingly weighed all the information. 
But in the end, he claimed Cadena had made a convincing case 
to CONARE that he faced a well-founded fear of death at the 
hands of paramilitary 
elements should he return to Colombia, which overshadowed the 
GOC allegation and extradition request, which appeared 
questionable on several points to CONARE, as noted above. 
 
¶6. (C) In response to a direct question from PolCouns, 
Barreto indicated that CONARE had not suffered political 
pressure from any source in evaluating the case.  He added 
that Cadena's status in Brazil is contingent on his 
fulfilling his obligations as a refugee (i.e., no further 
political activism on Brazilian soil, rupture of his ties to 
FARC), and that if CONARE were to be presented with 
compelling evidence that Cadena had lied in any aspect of his 
petition, Barreto would recommend to the committee "in a 
minute" that his status be revoked and the legal path opened 
for extradition.  Barreto indicated CONARE is open to further 
appeals and new information from the GOC about the case.  He 
also invited the USG to provide any relevant information it 
might have regarding Cadena directly to Barreto, undertaking 
to personally assume responsibility for appropriate security 
and handling of the information should it involve 
intelligence sources and methods. 
 
¶7. (S/NF) Comment. The GOB officials demarched, especially 
Barreto, provided a cogent explanation for the Cadena 
decision, although from our perspective not a particularly 
credible one.  They evidenced understanding for the points in 
our demarche, were frank and not defensive in their 
reactions, and had ready answers that seemed to reflect an 
exhaustive deliberative process conducted within the expected 
UNHCR parameters.  None of that changes our view, per 
previous sensitive reporting, that the CONARE decision was 
driven largely by heavy pressure from the very top of the 
Brazilian government, and that the GOB members of CONARE 
ultimately yielded to that pressure (we think the UN and NGO 
members were likely disposed in that direction in any event). 
 That said, if the GOC is prepared to fight this, it needs to 
develop the strongest, most detailed possible legal case 
against Cadena on the specific charges relating to his 
alleged command of the attack on the CNP base in 1991 and the 
two deaths that resulted.  Coupling that with any further 
information or intelligence that the GOC or USG assets can 
develop on Cadena's history in FARC military actions would 
also be useful. 
 
Sobel