During a recent press conference on matters of national security, the Director of Intelligence and Security, Mariano Figueres Olsen, told reporters that his agency has detected the presence of members of terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Costa Rica. Director Figueres was quite vague about all other details about the purported visits, and thus declined to give specifics as to the number of ISIS operatives who may or may not have been in Costa Rica.
Other details that Director Figueres declined to comment on include: when the terrorists visited or their possible motives. He did mention that some entered Costa Rica legally and others didn’t, that some of them were of nationalities that require a visa to enter our country while others were from countries that don’t. Director Figueres also explained that these shadowy ISIS visitors were sometimes monitored by his agency, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), which is an agency under the purview of the Executive Branch that not many people know about.
The DIS has been the focus of wide controversy over the last few years. In 2008, a former Deputy Director was caught in a sting operation conducted by the Office of Judicial Investigations (Spanish initials: OIJ). Reports of the investigation by OIJ agents suggested that the Deputy Director had participated in a nefarious scheme to pilfer personal and business bank accounts by means of counterfeit checks. Last year, the DIS leadership suffered a black eye by allowing former President Laura Chinchilla to travel aboard a private jet owned by an alleged money launderer working for a major drug cartel. As that scandal unfolded, yet another Deputy Director got into hot water when he crashed his car in Escazu and was found to be driving under the influence of lots of alcohol.
Although the DIS budget is confidential, many legislators in Costa Rica have done their own intelligence work and found that the agency burns through a considerable amount of cash. For this reason, there have been a few proposals to dismantle the DIS and transfer it to the supervision of the Ministry of Public Security.
Back to the reports of ISIS operatives in Costa Rica: Due to the checkered past of the DIS, most Ticos doubt the comments by Director Figueres. The incredulity is based on the fact that the Director has been tasked with DIS reform, and to this day he has not made too much progress in that regard.
Since there are no clear declassification procedures within this intriguing agency, the people of Costa Rica have no choice but to mistrust. Still, some intelligence analysts believe that Costa Rica’s proximity to the Panama Canal and to Nicaragua, where the current regime supports the despotic leader of Syria Bashar al-Assad, could be a reason for operatives of terrorist organizations transiting through our country.
In recent weeks, news of the Islamic extremist group known as ISIS (as well as Islamic State and ISIL) has been linked to Latin American behemoths Argentina and Mexico. A conservative group from the US, Judicial Watch, published an article in late August claiming ISIS is already operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez and planning car bomb attacks against its northern neighbor.