Posted on 02/16/2007 10:50:36 AM PST by NormsRevenge
BOGOTA, Colombia - Five Colombian congressmen, including the brother of the foreign minister, were arrested in a widening scandal linking the country's political class and far-right militias drew closer to the president, local media reported.
It was the latest wave of arrests of lawmakers arising from a Supreme Court investigation into collusion between politicians and the militias, who are responsible for some of the worst massacres of Colombia's five-decade civil conflict and a sizable portion of its cocaine trade.
Previously, other politicians have been charged with funding the paramilitaries and ordering murders during the civil conflict.
Colombian media reported late Thursday that Alvaro Araujo, brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo, was arrested in a shopping center in northern Bogota.
The Supreme Court also issued an arrest warrant for another politician whose whereabouts was unknown.
All of those captured are loyal supporters of President Alvaro Uribe, who remains popular despite the scandal for bringing the homicide rate down to a two-decade low.
The radio reports did not give the source of the information and calls by The Associated Press to the Supreme Court and the chief federal prosecutor's office were not immediately returned.
But Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said the government supported the foreign minister and would ignore calls for her resignation, despite the long-expected arrests.
"Each person must answer for their actions individually," Holguin told local media.
When Alvaro Araujo was first questioned by the Supreme Court late last year, the foreign minister had offered her resignation but Uribe refused it. She is now likely to face intense pressure to quit from the opposition, which has said she should not be the public face of Colombia as it seeks international aid to help it fight a civil war and the world's largest cocaine industry.
Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo is married to an AP photographer.
The lawmakers arrested Thursday in addition to Alvaro Araujo were Mauricio Pimiento, Dieb Maloof, Alfonso Campo Escobar and Luis Eduardo Vives, the reports said. An arrest order was issued for Rep. Jorge Luis Caballero.
The burgeoning scandal involves politicians from Colombia's northern coast, a paramilitary stronghold. It began with the jailing of three leading politicians from the Caribbean province of Sucre in November.
Much of the evidence against the politicians comes from a laptop confiscated from the right-hand man of the paramilitary warlord known as Jorge 40, or Rodrigo Tovar Pupo.
The leading commanders of the paramilitaries, a group formed by landowners and drug-traffickers to wrest control of the countryside from leftist rebels, are in jail under a peace deal with the government. The accord saw more than 30,000 militia fighters lay down their weapons, although the government has admitted that some fighters have taken up arms again to create new paramilitary groups.
Human rights groups have documented extensive links between various parts of Colombia's establishment, in particular the military, and the illegal militias, listed by the U.S. government as a "foreign terrorist organization."
Ping
As though the leftists are any better. Both sides have a list of human rights abuses a mile long.
Here's the part of Colombia I care about being secure: a few miles on either sides of the oil pipelines and production infrastructure. As long as the oil keeps flowing and we can keep the conflict inside Columbia, why should we care?
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