An alleged Colombian drug trafficker said he was an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) when he was arrested, the local newspaper La Prensa reported Tuesday.
"I was always in touch with the DEA, the problem is I do not believe a country like the United States can intervene in another country's judicial process," Jose Nelson Urrego, who is detained in a Panamanian jail, said in a telephone interview with the newspaper.
Urrego's defense lawyer has presented a "public interest" visa endorsed by the U.S. government to Panamanian prosecutors.
According to the U.S. Public Security Department, the "public interest entry permit" is granted to certain people that would not be admitted into the United States in normal circumstances, but can enter as they are part of a legal process or collaborate in a "very important public benefit."
The Panamanian Public Ministry withheld one of the satellite telephones he was using to contact the DEA, Urrego said.
Urrego, a former communications head for Colombia's Norte del Valle drug cartel, was arrested at Chapera Island in the gulf of Panama last September. He was charged with laundering some 13 million U.S. dollars in four years in Panama.
Jose Abel Almengor, Panama's first public prosecutor against drugs, confirmed that a satellite telephone was withheld in Chapera Island, saying nothing proves that it belongs to the DEA.
Almengor said he asked through Panama's embassy in the United States whether Urrego was a DEA informant, but "the answer denies the link."
In another interview with Miami's Nuevo Herald newspaper, published Sunday, Urrego said he started working for the DEA after serving a three-year sentence at Picota prison in Colombia's capital, Bogota.
Meanwhile, Gavin Sundwall, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Panama, said, "For security and operative reasons, we will not comment if anybody acted or not as an informant or supplied aid tothe DEA."
Source:Xinhua
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