Tag: Colombia

Recently declassified British files reveal how the Foreign Office prepared for a possible military coup in Colombia by secretly training the country’s armed forces in psychological warfare. In 1970, Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), secretly provided two weeks of counter-insurgency instruction to high-ranking Colombian military officials. Part of the course […]

The British embassy in Bogotá is financing a new public relations campaign to “improve perceptions” of the UK in Colombia, Declassified can reveal. The project has been launched while the UK is supporting the repressive Colombian security forces. According to Foreign Office documents released to Declassified, the UK embassy spent £6,000 in 2019-20 to conduct […]

The UK military had up to nine soldiers “assisting” the Colombian police force a month before it launched a brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters that left 63 people dead. But the Ministry of Defence (MOD) refused to reveal the nature of the assistance or tell Declassified if the UK personnel continued assisting the Colombian police throughout the […]

As protests in Colombia are met with deadly violence, Declassified reveals the UK’s National Crime Agency trained the Colombian police in a multimillion-pound five-year programme that is shrouded in secrecy.