Cruz Prado declines to testify, fearful of prosecution in Colombia

Former labor leader Cruz Prado declined to testify Thursday before a legislative committee investigating the presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Costa Rica, citing a possible money-laundering investigation against her in Colombia for having $480,000 of FARC money in a safe in her Heredia home east of San José.

Authorities were led to the safe from information found in a computer belonging to FARC’s second in command, Raúl Reyes, who was killed March 1 in a cross-border Colombian raid into Ecuador.

Prado and her husband, professor Francisco Gutiérrez, maintain they believed the safe contained documents.

Legislators lamented Prado’s refusal to talk, saying the matter was one of national security.

Prado gave The Tico Times a document in which she reiterated her house has always been open to thinkers, academics and even exiled political leaders, to make the point it was not unusual that she and her husband would agree to host Colombian rebels.