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Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno announced Monday the elimination of Ecuador’s intelligence agency Senain. According to the president the decision is part of ongoing administrative austerity measures and a response to the citizens’ “ethical clamor,” but some fear this measure will give back the country’s intelligence to controversial state security institutions.
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Former President Rafael Correa expressed his frustration via Twitter explaining why Senain was created in 2009. “Remember the intelligence ‘services’ before the Revolution: financed by the (United States) Embassy, without articulation, without civilian control… That is why Senain was created,” Correa said.
However, many have applauded Moreno’s announcement, charging the institution with spying on and persecuting Correa’s opposition, while others demanded investigations and sanctions.
Coronel Mario Pazmiño, former director of military intelligence is among those calling for further action, including “1. an audit of all reserved spending, 2. delivery of all the equipments, and 3. investigation of all the special operatives against opposition members.”
His support has raised concerns over the direction Ecuadorean intelligence will take now.
In 2008, after the Colombian attack of Angostura, in which the Colombian military bombed a FARC camp within Ecuadorean territory without coordination with Ecuador’s government, Pazmiño was removed from the military for withholding information on the attack from his superiors, including the president and top officials of the Armed Forces, and being a U.S. informant, a claim supported by Ecuadorean historian Jaime Galarza and former Joint Command Chief, Ernesto Gonzalez.
Before Senain was created, Ecuadorean intelligence was dependent on the military and the police, two institutions criticized for their role in human rights violations, especially during the late 1980s, when many activists and political opponents of former President Leon Febres-Cordero were kidnapped, tortured and killed.
One of the most well known cases is the disappearance of the Restrepo brothers, two teens who had no political affiliations and who went missing after being stopped by the Police.
In 2007, during Rafael Correa’s first year in power, Ecuador launched the Truth Commission to investigate all the cases of crimes against humanity and state terrorism, which was opposed by prominent military and police men, including Mario Pazmiño.
Since 2003 Pazmiño has been accused by prominent human rights groups like the Permanent Human Rights Assembly of being part of a group known as White Legion, involved in state crimes during Febres-Cordero’s government.
After he was fired from the military for collaborating with U.S. intelligence, Pazmiño became a politician for the same party that sponsored Febres-Cordero’s presidency in the 1980s.
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