Civil Rights Division
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20530
Jim Reback
Department of Homeland Security
Office of the Inspector General
Office of Counsel
Stop 2600, 245 Murray Dr. SW Building 410
Washington DC, 20528
Dear Mr. Reback:
We wish to document with this agency various occasions during which we believe there was official misconduct on the part of the security entities of the governments of both Colombia and the United States. We have documented, as best as we could, the encounters our family has had with both governments on the following three Web sites:
www.maritimasjustice.blogspot.com
Our family nucleus was shattered as a consequence of events detailed on those Web sites; all four family members were scattered to the whims of fate, which have not been kind, a mental block descended throughout the years of hardship in order to survive and it has not been until now that my children, as adults who wish to know all the facts, that we have been able to piece together these events. We have now had the opportunity to, as unemotionally as possible, analyze the details of what was it that befell our family and shattered the bright future my husband and our family had built through 50 years of hard, successful, and above all, honest work in the maritime shipping business. This complaint sums up the relevant points for this missive’s purposes.
My son Nicholas and I first became active in voicing our opposition to the passage by Congress of the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement in early 2008. We began voicing our dissent by writing, and telephoning the constituent services office of our Congresswoman, Deborah Wassermann, and our Senator, Bill Nelson. In one instance we personally visited congresswoman Wasserman office. We then proceeded to Washington D.C. and visited the embassy of Colombia in Washington D.C. on Leroy Street on, or about, April 7th, 2008. A named Carlos Morales, whose card describes his post as Counselor to the Ambassador, received us. We were heard and the ambassador, Carolina Barco, issued the attached letter a few days later.
Up to this point, the present day Colombian authorities have comported themselves with the utmost decorum which has not always been the case during the 25 year history of our lawsuit against them. At the beginning of this confrontation, as our ship laid immobilized in port with the Colombian government’s cargo on board, the son of an ex-Colombian president and extremely influential Director of the state owned bank that owned the cargo on board our ship, the CAJA DE CRÉDITO AGRARIO INDUSTRIAL Y MINERO, whose agent and also Colombian government entity, ALMAGRARIO S.A., had paid us with a check returned for non-sufficient funds, attempted to use the Colombian judicial system to terrorize us with his sworn testimony, his allegation, to a Colombian judge claiming that we were seeking double payment. My husband removed his diplomatic immunity voluntarily upon being requested and submitted himself to official interrogatory. The judge ended up excusing himself and instructed us not to unload the ship so he could commence an investigation. There was no such investigation. The cargo on board was not the one that was supposed to have been bought; there was a fraud in that transaction as well and yet no authority, Colombian or American, ever investigated. The CAJA DE CRÉDITO AGRARIO INDUSTRIAL Y MINERO, the Colombian state owned bank who included and paid the transportation fees in the contract for the fertilizer with AMAX CHEMICAL, then allowed its agent to sign a charter party agreement with us, a Colombian entity at the time; under now rescinded currency restriction laws and the contract itself, a Colombian shipper transporting goods for a Colombian client had to be paid in Colombian pesos.
Subsequently, beginning May 20th, 2008, a pattern of investigation by Colombian security and “anti-drug” police entities focusing on our family’s personal lives (that we know of), has been revealed to us. The Colombian entity “Departamento Nacional de Estupefacientes,” whose stated official mission is to “assess, coordinate and execute ... the National Government’s policy focused on the control and diminution of the production, traffic and consumption of psychoactive drugs”, electronically accessed our Web site which documents our Colombian related protest: www.maritimasjustice.blogspot.com. The page Web page itself is in the public domain but, as can be see in the document titled “DNE_May_20_2008”, their visit’s referring universal resource locator, or U.R.L., was a page on Facebook detailing our family life and interactions with friends. The screenshot also provides evidence that there were “Multiple visits spread over more than one day”.
The retaliatory electronic espionage by the Colombian D.N.E., which we believe was prompted by our exercise of freedom of speech, continued as recorded in the attached document detailing yet another visit 3 months later, on August 26th, 2008, to our Web site after having entered our last name, Zakzuk, into Google’s search engine.
The document titled “Fondo Vigilancia”, is the September 24, 2009, visit to our Web site by a Colombian security services or the “Fondo de Vigilancia y Seguridad” (Vigilance and Security Fund), an official organ of the Colombian National Police. The referring URL this time is one of Hotmail’s, or more specifically, Microsoft’s email servers, which indicates that it was used to transmit information about our family and probably a hyperlink to our Web site to this security official at the “Fondo”.
Simultaneously, the Colombian court of appeals in Medellin, Colombia, who had in its hands our 25-year-old lawsuit, the Sala Civil del Tribunal Superior de Antioquia, issued a decision in which the magistrates went out of their way to invent a legal obligation, out of thin air, in order to reduce the amount of damages we are, and have been for 26 years, entitled to. They claimed that because the law grants a right to an unpaid ship owner to sell the cargo after 30 days of demurrage it also, again, out of thin air, imposes a duty to do so. Besides, we would have been more than glad to sell their cargo and reclaim our expenses except that the cargo on board our ship, the fertilizer bought by the Colombian government, was not of the quality or type stipulated on the Bill of Lading which was how Mariano Ospina, then Director General of the Caja Agraria, and his cohort, Petrofert Ltda., were defrauding the Colombian state. The cargo finally went for official auction 3 times with no bidders and it had to be sold for a pittance of what it was supposed to have been worth. This ruling marks the moment, after 25 years, that the Colombian judicial system finally had to recognize that we were the victims, overturning the lower court’s corrupt ruling (which took 12 years itself). We believe that we have already been denied justice by the Colombian government and their failure to provide the effective and efficient legal resolution of our injury. What justice is there when the judicial system of a country sits on your complaint for decades, rules unjustly against you 12 years later and then after 25 years, under pressure, admits that it, the judicial system itself, failed us. What good is that now when Petrofert Ltda. doesn’t even exist; what a cruel, illegitimate and cynical hoax.
There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that this investigation into our lives, this invasion of our privacy and violation of human and American civil rights by security agencies of the Colombian state, with their long and bloody history of malfeasance and politically motivated violence, carried out electronically on American datacenter hosted computers in the United States, along with this act of reprisal by the Colombian court of appeals, were prompted by our exercise of our rights; whether it is our dispute with the government of the United States, the Colombian government, or both. Personnel at the State Department and the U.S. embassy in Colombia have also been visitors to our Web site as can be seen by the attached documentation. In the State Dept.’s case, multiple visits over many months beginning right around our visit to the Colombian embassy in Washington D.C. (see attached).
In the coming weeks we will be personally delivering a petition based on relevant Colombian freedom of information laws to the Departamento Nacional de Estupefacientes headquarters in Bogota to determine why this illegal espionage was ordered and by whom. We will also be complaining to the Colombian national human rights ombudsman.
The abuse of authority and destruction of our family and our 50-year family enterprise by the policies, acts and omissions of the government of the United States is what follows. Completely oversimplified, the basis of our claim is that a ship named the “don Julio”, Panamanian flagged and which belonged to Maritimas Internacionales Limitada, of which I, Yolanda de Zakzuk, was at the time and remain a shareholder, was seized in international waters on June 3, 1987 by the United States Coast Guard cutter Bear while en route to the United States without the knowledge or permission of the ship’s owner or Maritimas executives. Bahamian jurisdiction was fraudulently invoked two days later after having drifted and looted our ship in international waters on a westerly course towards Miami, the warship’s home port and the nearest federal court. It was taken to the Bahamas by the U.S. warship and turned over to Bahamian authorities who effectively scuttled the ship after a botched, and fraudulent from the start due to U.S. government actions, judicial proceeding. The supposed basis for the taking of the Don Julio was that Maritimas and its owners had engaged in drug trafficking by placing several tons of marijuana and some cocaine on the ship. This was false. Our family and Maritimas had cooperated with the U.S. Customs Service for years, through a customs officer named Victor Thompson, in setting up sting operations directed by Mr. Thompson. In fact, we, my husband and the Captain, had just placed an undercover U.S. Customs agent onboard as the oiler for this very trip (undercover U.S. Customs agents onboard our ships were, apparently, sporadic occurrences throughout the years). What is even more disturbing is the fact that, according to our Captain, the cocaine that was alleged to have been ours by the U.S. government, a claim later presented before the Bahamian court by the sycophantic Bahamian prosecutor’s office, belonged to U.S. Customs and was part of their “sting” operation occurring simultaneously onboard the don Julio during that voyage.
These events took place on June 3rd through the 5th, 1987. My husband, our children and I had been forced to flee for our lives, and abandon our ships, not even two months before because of the failure of U.S. Customs to comply with their word that they would protect us against the drug traffickers. That same week that we fled Colombia, April 14th, 1987, the don Julio and its Captain were at the port of Miami handing over a load of cocaine to U.S. Customs. On May 17th, 1987, after my husband attempted to sneak back into the country to gain some oversight over our business he was tortured by drug traffickers, a Victor Anicharico, his brother-in-law Libonatti, with the help of their political facilitator, then Colombian senator Luis Lorduy Lorduy. This event, and its disastrous ramifications, is a direct consequence of the policies, acts and omissions of the government of the United States and U.S. Customs which had placed our ships and our lives between the Medellin cartel, responsible at the time for 80% of the cocaine coming into this country, and their billion dollar clientele.
Simultaneously, U.S. Customs owed us over $270,000 dollars which my husband was attempting to collect through an attorney, whose name U.S. Customs has refused to disclose, and U.S. senator Robert Graham (see http://www.letitbeknown.org/English/UPDATES.html ) My husband was attempting to collect from U.S. Customs money he was forced to pay, at gunpoint, to Colombian drug traffickers for the cocaine given to U.S. Customs agent Victor Thompson who then, criminally, neglected to capture the trafficker or protect my husband from retaliation. Captain Rubio, who had been involved in this U.S. Customs sting gone awry, witnessed this event in my husband’s office. My husband also told his friend, Mayor General Eduardo Plata Quinones (ret.) about this incident contemporaneously before he was transferred from command of the our home town’s military unit.
We would also like to refer to your attention and for your investigation, what was the U.S. government’s role in our assertion that it interfered with our rights when it simultaneously had an adversary “administrative” procedure in the takings of our property, the motor ship don Alejo, and, unbeknownst to us, was also investigating our attorney, Edward Shohat, in 1988. We charge that the defendant did tortuously interfere with our due diligence and right to seek redress in the federal courts, again, the one time we were still in a viable financial situation to, by now after the Bahamian debacle which I sold my home of 15 years in Colombia to pay for, barely afford an attorney by disrupting the client attorney relationship entered into with Edward Shohat, whom we retained in July of 1988, when it was contemporaneously "investigating Edward Shohat for money laundering", in the words of Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Ernesto "Ernie" Patino. These words were spoken to my husband in 1991 or 1992 by this agent of the U.S. government, thus proving that the defendant had actual knowledge of the clear conflict of interest we, as the investigated party's clients, would suffer. Evidence that the defendant had reason to be officially investigating, and have animosity towards, Shohat, we assert, is CASE #: 0:87-cv-06657-DLG, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Fort Lauderdale. This was a “federal drugs forfeiture” case in which Shohat, representing an innocent owner corporation claim against the drug related “civil forfeiture” the U.S. government was advancing against a property, was prematurely and incorrectly brought to a sudden close on March 17, 1988, in favor of Shohat's client; we retained his services in July of 1988, 3 months after this incident. That case was reopened in 1991 and concluded successfully for the U.S. government with Shohat's client losing his claim to the property; Shohat was substituted as counsel for the that claimant, C.G.L. Investment Company Incorporated, at the initiation of subsequent proceedings. This proves motive on the U.S. government’s part as Shohat's interference was shown to have been contrary to the interests of “justice” and determined by the U.S. District Court. We are keenly aware that Shohat's income, coming primarily from the narcotics traffickers in the hundreds of drug cases he has participated in, was therefore placed under threat by the defendant's "money laundering investigation", an obvious pressure tactic used by the U.S. government against the “drug bar”, creating an unacceptable situation for us as his clients. The fact that the true story behind our encounters with U.S. Customs, my rights, my claims were never heard by a federal judge is proof enough of his malpractice. The U.S. government then proceeded to cancel my U.S. visa, as I was not a U.S. citizen at the time only my children were, when there could not have been any indication of drug trafficking on my part and in order to assure impunity for their actions
This is not a full recount of how we believe the United States, who must be held responsible for the real life consequences of its policies, destroyed our peace and our lives in these times.
We will have a family member in Geneva, Switzerland, to document our complete complaint at the headquarters of both the International Committee for the Red Cross and the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The people charged with responsibly and correctly running the relevant institutions of the governments of the United States and Colombia have abused this family’s rights. We seek to right this injustice. We would appreciate your assistance and look forward to your comments.
Yolanda de Zakzuk
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