Human rights and cybertechnology seem to have a lot to do with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. The president, who sells himself as “the coolest dictator in the world”, surprised this time with his decision last Wednesday to appoint cyber lawyer Andrés Guzmán as his government’s first commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, because of Torture and despotism has been condemned arrests and enforced disappearances in a brutal war against gangs. But the Colombian-born candidate has major limitations: he lacks knowledge of Salvadorian politics and has no more than seven months’ experience on human rights issues. His long career has been dedicated to advising on cybercrime, including media cases related to the Colombian right wing.
For 16 years, the new commissioner was in charge of Adalid, a company he founded from which he advised and investigated high-tech crimes. “No computer, hard drive, mobile phone or SIM card can resist attorney Andrés Guzmán Caballero, who, in the best style of the famous CSI series hounds and through digital evidence, has solved the darkest cases of justice in the country,” it says in the company profile of the current commissioner, who left the company management in September 2022. According to the Salvadorian government meeting show “the commitment to the human rights of the population, which for decades has been excluded from political power, non-governmental organizations and representatives of the international community.”
There were many and very notorious cases involving Guzmán. He was the lawyer defending Óscar Iván Zuluaga – Uribista’s candidate for the 2014 presidential election – when a video released by Semana showed the politician together with a cybernetic hacker accused of spying on the peace process of the government of Juan Manuel Santos with of the FARC guerrillas during the presidential election campaign. “We were able to determine that it was a fake video,” Guzmán said in statements reinforced in various media outlets. Some time later, it was confirmed that the video was not fake.
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The cyber expert is singled out for his ties to the ombudsman, conservative lawyer Carlos Camargo. In 2022, Adalid, along with another company and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), founded the Digital Evidence Forensic Laboratory, a digital platform for the Office of the Ombudsman to support public defenders. The Union of Human Rights Defenders of the Office of the Ombudsman (Sindhep) denounced in Cambio magazine a few weeks ago that the laboratory was allegedly used to spy on communications from officials questioning Camargo’s management.
Guzmán, during a video call with this newspaper, denies that his work has been linked to the Colombian right and asserts that he has also worked with left-wing presidents in the region, although he says he cannot identify their names for legal reasons . “I’ve never had a political leader,” he affirms, while emphasizing that he describes himself as a “technician”. He also refuses to answer questions about Cambio’s complaint: “The media in Colombia know me, they know that I am an honest and decent man.” It is an article that does not deserve words.”
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Emel Rojas, councilwoman for the right-wing Christian party Colombia Justa Libres from Bogotá, was among those celebrating the appointment in El Salvador. “Conscious of his high human and professional qualities, I am delighted with the appointment of Dr. Andrés Guzman Caballero” remarked on Twitter. He also adds on the phone that both are friends as they are doing postgraduate studies at Sergio Arboleda University. There they also met Camargo. “I say he comes from the middle. I’m the one who takes right-wing positions, I don’t know if he’s taken a turn,” he says.
“It’s boring to do the same thing every day”
Guzmán’s first contacts with El Salvador were a year ago, when he began traveling to provide advice on digital rights and hold conferences on artificial intelligence. At that time he met Bukele and they both had “very interesting conversations”. At that time, the lawyer wanted to radically change his life. “It’s very boring to do the same thing every day,” he said to himself after 16 years at the helm of Adalid. He says he sold the company, is no longer a director and accepted Camargo’s offer to serve as delegated defender for rights in virtual environments and freedom of expression, a new position. It didn’t last long: he resigned in April 2023, shortly after Cambio’s denunciation. He explains that he left because Bukele had already offered him the new position in El Salvador.
He was a professor at various universities in Bogotá, including Rosario, Libre and La Sabana; He also created and directed the Masters in Data Protection and ICT at Sergio Arboleda University, a think tank founded by conservative politicians and known for its links to the right. He has also served as a consultant, contractor and litigator. He was the National Registry’s representative in a criminal complaint a decade ago for leaking the lists to the media that signed the appeal to remove then-Bogotá Mayor Gustavo Petro. Although the complaint was not directed at a specific person, he explained that the only one who had access to this data was the current President.
The lawyer considers his work on cybercrime to be particularly relevant to the field of human rights in a country aiming to be “fully digital”. He emphasizes that human rights encompass issues of digital identity, privacy and habeas data: “I have been concerned with human rights issues all my life.” For him, his lack of knowledge in other areas, such as the right to water, is compounded by the contributions of his advisors offset.
Being a foreigner was not a problem for me. “When I travel to other countries, everything Colombian immediately disappears from me. I am very technical everywhere. I’ve worked as a consultant in many parts of the world,” he says. However, Guzmán acknowledges that he is in the early days of his tenure and needs to find out about the country’s social and cultural context. One of his supporters was Bukele, with whom he held long meetings: “He was kind enough to explain to me in general terms everything that is happening.” Human rights violations that occur when gangs recruit minors also appear to be among the priorities .
Guzmán arrives at a position of great challenge. International organizations such as Amnesty International accuse the Bukele government of committing “massive human rights violations” in its criminal policy. Images and videos show prisons filling up with prisoners living in crowds, in inhumane conditions and fearing violence. “[A un compañero] They beat him to death in the cell and dragged him out like an animal,” a former detainee told EL PAÍS in March. According to the complaints, many prisoners are being held awaiting trial without conclusive evidence linking them to the gangs. A tattoo can be enough to get stopped.
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However, Bukele is extremely popular in the Central American country with over 90% approval. It is a symbol of change for a population fed up with gang violence and disillusioned with a lack of options. Denouncing human rights abuses and attacks on other state institutions do not weaken his power: he has managed to benefit from a drastic drop in crime rates. In Colombia, he has become the benchmark of the right and President Gustavo Petro’s favorite rival. “I think I’ll vacation in Colombia,” Bukele promised in March.
The new commissioner justifies the criminal policies of the Salvadorian government, although he promises to visit prisons and request a report. “Due to an exceptional regime, there is a legal suspension of human rights. We need to analyze the historical framework, from years when people couldn’t move from one neighborhood to another, to years when curfews were imposed by the gangs. “There is an extraordinary war that requires extraordinary measures,” he insists. For Guzmán, the human rights discussion should not focus on the prisoners, but on an entire population whose rights have been violated by decades of violence: “People are afraid to speak. We have to find a solution.”
“I’m a technician”; “I am an honorable man”; “I have no political sponsors,” the lawyer repeated several times. According to him, politics is not part of his job; Last December, he circulated a sentence by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset against ideologies via his Twitter account. “Belonging to the left, like belonging to the right, is one of the infinite ways man can choose to be an idiot: both are indeed forms of moral hemiplegia,” he quoted. However, he rules out the possibility of joining the government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president in decades. If you were offered an equivalent job, you would turn it down. “I already have a serious contract with El Salvador,” he says.
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