Jul 18, 2008 : Fake NGO Site Used in Hostage Rescue

📅 July 18, 2008 - Colombian military intelligence created a website for a bogus humanitarian organization as part of its rescue mission to trick a terrorist group into releasing 15 hostages from captivity in the Columbian jungles, CNN.com reported Friday.


CNN discovered that the domain name of the fake group, Mision Humanitaria Internacional, was registered and hosted at web hosting provider Darts Studio. The website was launched just a few days before the July 2 mission to save former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 Colombian police and soldiers.

Held by Columbia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), a group of rebels notorious for kidnapping civilians and military figures for ransom and drug trading, the 15 hostages were rescued by Columbia security forces who tricked the rebels into believing they were from a leftist non-governmental group.

The Mision Humanitaria Internacional website, which was taken down Tuesday after CNN reported on the unpublished video and photos of the hostage rescue, claims to be a Barcelona, Spain organization formed in 1999 "to improve the processes of development to guarantee equality of opportunity for individuals and peoples."

The website supplied news articles and press releases in Spanish from the last nine years, along with the organization's logo - which was also displayed on the side of a helicopter used to rescue the hostages - plastered all over the site.

Columbia government and military spokesmen revealed Monday that all logos and emblems had been designed from scratch.

When asked about the site on Thursday, a Colombian defense ministry spokeswoman said she would contact CNN at a later time but never did, while all further efforts to contact the Colombian Defense Ministry for a comment were unsuccessful.

The website claimed that the organization was registered with the Spanish Interior Ministry and the regional Department of Justice. However, Spanish Interior Ministry spokesman Alvaro Pena told CNN that its records showed no trace of the so-called Mision Humanitaria Internacional.

David Olarte, a 22-year-old Bogota college student, heads up the five-person staffed Darts Studio, which offers domain registration, hosting and multimedia services. Olarte told CNN via email that he received an email on June 26 from someone "requesting two services: hosting and registration" for misionhi.org, which he responded to with a price quote.

After the man deposited the money for the quoted price into Olarte's account at the Bank of Bogota, Olarte registered the domain, set up the hosting space and supplied the customer with the information he needed to access the website account.

Olarte said the service transaction was performed entirely via email and he had no involvement whatsoever with the website's content. When CNN sent an email to the yahoo.com address Olarte said was his contact, it bounced back with an "unknown account" message.

After learning about the fake organization Wednesday, Olarte told CNN via email that he wanted to clear up he and his family's reputation and steer clear of any potential political problems or issues with safety regarding their affiliation with the fake website.