Interpol, the international police organisation, signalled on Thursday that documents detailing links between Colombia’s Farc guerrillas and Venezuela were genuine, a move that could increase regional tensions and create a dilemma for the US over whether to put Caracas on its terrorist list.

At a press conference in Bogotá, Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary-general, said there had been no tampering with three laptops, three USB drives and two hard discs after the Colombian army seized the equipment in a March cross-border raid on a Farc camp in Ecuador.