MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Paramilitary links closer to Colombian president Uribe

In spite of running on a sustained high wave of public opinion support, --the best performance of any leader in the Americas--, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe this week faced a major challenge when his cousin, political ally and former Senator Mario Uribe Escobar was taken into custody for allegedly colluding with rightwing paramilitary groups.

Colombia's federal prosecutor's office reported Wednesday that Senator Uribe was taken into custody by authorities, hours after he entered the embassy of Costa Rica in an unsuccessful asylum bid. Former senator Mario Uribe is one of the over 60 members of Colombia's Congress under investigation for alleged links with death squads, the paramilitary groups of the far right responsible for serious violating of human rights and drug trafficking. Uribe Escobar was forced to resign from his position as Senate speaker in October. In a short statement President Alvaro Uribe said he was "pained" over what had happened, but said he did not want to "interfere" or hinder "other institutional powers" from carrying out their duties. He "accepted the pain with patriotism". The former senator, who resigned in October, is one of the most powerful officials to be enmeshed in a scandal over politicians benefiting from ties to the illegal groups. He faces charges of allegedly seeking the political backing of paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso in 2002 just before national elections and of negotiating with another warlord the purchase of land in areas under paramilitary control. The former Senator is the latest in a string of more than 30 politicians elected to Congress in 2006 who have been arrested on charges related to conspiracy with the paramilitary death squads that controlled huge swathes of the country before they began demobilizing in 2003. Another thirty members of Congress are implicated in what has come to be known as the "parapolitics" scandal, including the Senate president and staunch Uribe ally, Nancy Patricia Gutierrez. For President Uribe it's a great challenge since with his cousin they ran for Congress in 1986 on the same ticket of a dissident Liberal Party faction they had co-founded; Mario won a seat in the House of Representatives while Alvaro became senator. When Alvaro left the senate to run for mayor of Medellin, his cousin Mario took over his senatorial seat. In 2002, Mario Uribe supported his cousin's bid for president. Despite repeated journalistic and judicial investigations into alleged links between the president and paramilitary groups, no evidence has ever come forth. The news is expected to have a great negative impact for Colombia's free trade agreement with United States which is stalled by the opposition Democrats in Congress where they hold a strong majority. Besides domestically the expanding "parapolitics" scandal is crippling Congress given the number of members resigned or arrested. Furthermore Congress could be running out of replacements: a day before Mario Uribe was indicted, the politician who took up his seat in the Senate was arrested on orders from the Supreme Court as part of the same investigation.