Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos is not only a fan of Castroism and Chavism, the leftist leader is also apparently a fan of their methods of destroying opposing figures who threaten their power. Taking a page out of the Castro playbook, Santos and his administration have deliberately set out to destroy Andres Felipe Arias, a protege of Colombia’s previous president Alvaro Uribe. Arias is a staunch advocate of democracy, free markets, and the rule of law and is therefore a direct threat to Santo’s leftist agenda.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is not helping Arias’ case. Instead of granting him asylum here in the U.S. where he is being held in a detention facility in Miami, the U.S. is set on capitulating to Santos and his corrupt judiciary and plans to extradite him back to Colombia. As a staunch opponent of Santos and his narco-terrorist friends at FARC, we all know what awaits Arias and his family if he is returned.
Jay Nordlinger has the whole story at National Review:
Asylum Now
The Awful Case of a Splendid Man
People can’t talk about this case without referring to Kafka. It is, indeed, Kafkaesque: a nightmare of injustice. “Laughable,” they also say. The case would be laughable if it weren’t so serious — especially for Andrés Felipe Arias and his family.
He is a Colombian political prisoner, in effect. He currently sits in the federal detention center here in Miami. He has asked the United States for asylum but has not been granted a hearing. Instead, a U.S. federal magistrate judge has ordered that he be sent back to Colombia.
These are strange times in Colombia. Jared Genser is one of the lawyers representing Arias. Genser is well-known in the human-rights field, having represented four Nobel peace laureates and countless dissidents. He says that he finds it incredible that “the international community has totally ignored” what President Santos has done — apart from his Nobel work, so to speak.
[…]
Arias was arrested in July 2011. His indictment hearing was a farce and a spectacle. It was held in a theater, rather than the regular, more sober venue. The theater was packed with supporters of the attorney general, Viviane Morales. They cheered as at a soccer game. The hearing was broadcast live on television. And Morales did something very unusual — also cruel and dangerous: She divulged the personal information of the Arias family, including their address and phone number. This despite the fact that they were under the protection of state security, given the threats to Arias from narco-terrorists and the like.
Soon, Arias would be imprisoned. His family’s security detail would be significantly reduced. The family began receiving threatening phone calls and were robbed.
Viviane Morales is a story unto herself. (She is no longer attorney general, as her appointment was determined to have been illegitimate. She is in the senate.) Her husband, Carlos Alonso Lucio, is an ex-guerrilla who once found asylum in the Castros’ Cuba.
Arias was indeed imprisoned — held in “preventive detention,” and for almost a full two years. (Twenty-three months.) Three times, he was denied bail. Finally, it was granted, a year into his trial.
That trial was before the supreme court — which gave the justices a juicy opportunity. While president, Uribe had accused some of them of ties to the drug world. And now they had Uribito, his fair-haired boy, in their clutches. The trial dragged on and on, finally concluding in February 2014.
And yet the court kept delaying a verdict. Why? It’s useful to know that 2014 was an election year. The first round of voting was held on May 25. The uribista candidate, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, led the incumbent, President Santos, by about four percentage points. But neither man won 50 percent, so the election went to a second round — scheduled for June 15. Two days before that election, the Supreme Court leaked some news: Arias would be convicted. This was, of course, a blow to Zuluaga and the uribistas, who were presented as corrupt. For whatever reason — and however cleanly — Santos won, by about six percentage points, on the 15th.
Read the entire piece HERE.