New documents on the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking case, revealed Friday afternoon by the United States government, have increased pressure on former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002). Among the 13,000 documents that the White House published with deletions and censorship, we find a photo of the former conservative president with Ghislaine Maxwell, friend and accomplice of the millionaire pedophile. Both wear Colombian Air Force uniforms: the former businesswoman revealed that they shared a common love for helicopters during an interview with the prosecution in June and broadcast two months later. Several political leaders, including left-wing President Gustavo Petro, have demanded that Pastrana provide an explanation.
Journalist Daniel Coronell broadcast in He showed three other photos in which Maxwell, who is now serving 20 years in prison, poses alone in an Air Force uniform. In one of the images, he holds a sign reading: “Parking is prohibited, space reserved for helicopters. Violators will be towed.”
The declassified files also include the June interview with the prosecutor’s office, in which Maxwell recounted her relationship with Pastrana. There, he says he met him in a Dublin bar and says he “doesn’t know” whether the former president ever visited the private Caribbean island where Epstein committed his sex crimes. Later, he clarified that they were together in Colombia. “I’m a helicopter pilot and so is Andrés. We became friends and I flew a Blackhawk in Colombia,” reads the transcript of the conversation with Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche. The former businesswoman also remembers that they traveled together to Cuba between 2002 and 2003 and that she met Fidel Castro, the historic leader of the revolution on the Caribbean island. A few months ago, a photo of Pastrana and the former Cuban president that Epstein had in his apartment in New York had already been released.
Petro, who for years has highlighted the links between the former conservative president and the pedophile, once again expressed his disavowal on Friday evening. “How does this illustrious right plan to put the uniform of our military forces on a pedophile?” he said in
Other political leaders on the Colombian left questioned the former president after the photo with Maxwell was released. “He owes many explanations to the country, first of all his relations with the pedophile Epstein and because he dresses (Maxwell) in Colombian Air Force uniforms,” wrote pro-government senator María José Pizarro in pedophiles of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and the reasons why he why, according to the complaint of Daniel Coronell, he invited the pimp Ghislaine Maxwell to pilot a Blackhawk military helicopter to allegedly “bomb terrorist camps on Colombian territory”.
Old accusations
For years, the Esptein affair has included accusations against Pastrana, the last Colombian president elected by the Conservative Party and known for the failure of the peace process with the FARC. On previous occasions, the former president has assured that he was “never” a friend of Epstein and that his one trip on the plane known as Lolita-Expresswhich was used to transport exploited minors, was allowed to visit Havana in 2003. According to Pastrana, Epstein left the island two days after his arrival, although he remained there. The photos with Maxwell now clearly prove that this trip was not the only connection.
The new batch of documents does not contain major revelations, but it does contain dozens of photos that illustrate how the tycoon, who committed suicide in 2019, had extraordinary connections in areas like finance and politics. Besides Pastrana, there are images of former US President Bill Clinton, singer Michael Jackson, former British prince Andrés Mountbatten-Windsor, philanthropist Bill Gates and academic Noam Chomsky. Beyond the growing suspicions, the newspaper appearance does not prove that the people photographed are guilty of a crime. Nor does this amount to having knowledge of the financier’s crimes.
The new revelations are full of deletions that hide entire pages and pages: there are 119 in just one of the documents. Survivors received them with disappointment and accused the government of a “cover-up,” since Congress demanded the files be released in full and Trump is another accused of alleged links. Deputy Prosecutor Blanche, for her part, justified on Fox News that it was necessary to protect the victims and the names of innocent people cited in the newspapers. However, he warned that new versions could be expected in “the next two weeks”.
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