by Austin Galt
Some members of the Araújo clan would be among the most high-profile scalps. Álvaro Araújo was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to nine years in prison for links to right-wing paramilitaries who helped him become a senator. He was released on parole in 2011. His sister María Araújo resigned from her cabinet position in the Uribe administration in the wake of this scandal. Hernando Molina Araújo spent over three years in prison after he was found to have had a close relationship with Jorge 40 and been elected governor of Cesar illegitimately. He was granted bail in 2010; however, his troubles didn’t end there. In 2015, he was ordered to stand trial after being accused of being the intellectual author of the murder of a Kankuama indigenous leader in 2004 in revenge for the murder of his mother, Consuelo Araújo Noguera.
Jorge Noguera served as Álvaro Uribe’s campaign manager in Magdalena and, after Uribe was elected president in 2002, he was appointed the director of DAS, despite having no real security or intelligence experience. Described as Uribe’s ‘good boy’, he served until 2005 when he was accused of having close ties to Jorge 40 and effectively putting the DAS at his service. In 2011, Noguera was sentenced to 25 years in jail for crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder. The DAS was dissolved that same year due to the paramilitary infiltration.
The chief information technology officer under Noguera, Rafael García, was also jailed for his part in erasing the names of drug traffickers from judicial files but maintained he did so under orders from Noguera. Garcia became the star witness in the parapolitics scandal.
Another person of interest to fall was Hugo Aguilar who had led the police operation which was credited with bringing down Pablo Escobar. He later entered politics, becoming the governor of Santander from 2004 until 2007. He was accused of corruption towards the end of his term and was succeeded by the resilient and wily politician Horacio Serpa. Aguilar’s connection to paramilitaries proved his undoing. He was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to nine years in prison as well as being fined roughly US$2 million, which he stated he could not pay. He regained his freedom in 2015 and was photographed driving a flashy Porsche convertible in early 2017.
The first politician to be convicted of crimes committed by paramilitaries was Salvador Arana, the former governor of Sucre. He was deemed responsible for the murder of a political adversary who had the audacity to confront President Uribe during a community meeting in March 2003, exclaiming, ‘President, they’re going to kill me’. The paramilitaries did indeed kill him the following month. For this and his links to paramilitaries, Arana was sentenced to 40 years in prison in what was considered a historic judgement, not only due to the long sentence but because it classed these parapolitics offences as crimes against humanity. It was his former chauffeur, Jairo ‘Pitirri’ Castillo, who testified against him and he would be instrumental in bringing down another big shot.
A close ally of Arana was Álvaro ‘El Gordo’ García, the senator from Sucre who had been accused of involvement in the massacre by AUC paramilitaries in Macayepo in 2000. The two men were so close that in Sincelejo, the capital of Sucre, the people used to say, ‘Wherever the fat man is is where Arana is’. García also received a stiff sentence of 40 years in prison for the massacre as well as the murder of a local teacher who was witness to electoral fraud which resulted in the García-supported candidate winning Sucre’s 1997 gubernatorial election. Jairo Castillo was once again the key witness. He had previously served as the bodyguard of Joaquín García who was the rancher Álvaro García was recorded having a telephone conversation with just days before the massacre. Castillo testified that for carrying out this crime Álvaro García had paid Salomón Feris Chadid, the right-hand man of Salvatore Mancuso.
It was also Jairo Castillo who testified that Mario Uribe, a senator and the cousin of Álvaro Uribe, met with paramilitaries in 1998 and 1999, while Salvatore Mancuso also declared he met with Mario Uribe to discuss his political support heading into the 2002 elections. After being denied political asylum by Costa Rica in 2008, he was taken into custody and subsequently sentenced to over seven years in prison. He was released on parole in 2012.
Santiago Uribe, the younger brother of Álvaro Uribe, was arrested in 2016 and is alleged to have founded Los 12 Apóstoles or The 12 Apostles, a paramilitary group accused of killing scores of petty criminals and guerrilla collaborators in the municipality of Yarumal, Antioquia in the 1990s. The local police chief stated he received $2000 per month to turn a blind eye while the local priest allegedly listened to the confessions of his parishioners and reported those who were guerrilla sympathisers to The 12 Apostles. While many witnesses have been killed, Salvatore Mancuso and Don Berna have backed up claims made against Santiago Uribe who insists the accusations are part of a political plot against him and his older brother.
Another brother Jaime, who died of cancer in 2001, was known as ‘El Pecoso’ or ‘The Freckly’ and, in testimony given from his American jail, Don Berna stated that he was a businessman who was close to Pablo Escobar and so became a military target of Los Pepes but was saved by Pacho Cifuentes who intervened. Jaime had a relationship with Dolly Cifuentes who was in charge of laundering money for the Cifuentes clan. Their daughter Ana Maria, who married the nephew of extradited drug boss Fabio Ochoa, was arrested in 2015 over her alleged links to the Sinaloa Cartel. Dolly was captured in 2011 and extradited to the United States and subsequently released in 2015. A couple of other Cifuentes family members have also been captured in recent years, effectively putting an end to the criminal clan.
Controversy has swirled around the bespectacled and priestly-looking Álvaro Uribe for decades. During his time as director of civil aviation between 1980 and 1982, many permits for aircraft and airstrips were issued and it is alleged that Uribe was in collusion with the drug traffickers. Virginia Vallejo, the mistress of Pablo Escobar, backed up the allegations saying that, ‘Pablo told me that without the help of “that blessed little boy” he would be bringing coca paste on foot from Bolivia’. Uribe was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing by then attorney general Horacio Serpa.
Uribe was appointed mayor of Medellín in 1982 when Pablo Escobar was effectively the most powerful man in the city. He resigned after only five months during a crisis in which President Betancur claimed Álvaro Uribe and his father were linked to the Medellín Cartel. It is no secret that the Uribe and Ochoa families were friends, while in 1992 Don Berna declared before the attorney general’s office that Uribe ‘was a collaborator of the capo Pablo Escobar’.
His father Alberto Uribe was killed in June 1983 after an attack on their farm Las Guacharacas located in eastern Antioquia which also left his brother Santiago seriously injured. Álvaro claimed the FARC were responsible, although the guerrillas denied this. Some people accused his father of being a drug trafficker, including assassinated minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla according to sworn testimony from his sister. This came after a helicopter previously owned by Alberto Uribe was found in the raid on the cocaine processing laboratory Tranquilandia.
Álvaro Uribe served as a senator between 1986 and 1994 and it was during this time that the DIA put together a list of the world’s drug traffickers. The list, which was prepared in 1991 but only released to the public in 2004, and which included musician Carlos Vives, named Uribe, saying he was:
A Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the US. His father was murdered in Colombia for his connection with the narcotics traffickers. Uribe has worked for the Medellín Cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria. He participated in Escobar’s political campaign to win the position of assistant parliamentarian to Jorge Ortega. Uribe has been one of the politicians, from the senate, who has attacked all forms of the extradition treaty.
Uribe dismissed the report, pointing out the intelligence remains unverified.
During his term as governor of Antioquia between 1995
and 1997, right-wing paramilitary groups began to surge in the state and Uribe vocally supported the legal CONVIVIR groups. He was certainly a vocal opponent of the left-wing guerrillas. In February 1997, Operation Genesis saw government forces coordinate with paramilitary fighters to rid Urabá of FARC guerrillas. The paramilitaries, led by Freddy ‘El Alemán’ Rendón Herrera, committed various violations, including beheading a man after which they played football with his head. These actions caused the displacement of 3500 inhabitants. While an army general was later imprisoned for this, Uribe has denied any responsibility.
The Uribe family farm Las Guacharacas was once again the scene of tragedy after the ELN guerrillas burned down the house and then later killed the caretaker in 1996. (The AUC’s Metro Bloc was reportedly created in response to this.) A large part of the farm was then sold to a company owned by the Gallón Henao brothers who were linked to the murder of footballer Andrés Escobar.
During his first term as president, Álvaro Uribe accomplished a lot of what he had set out to do. The guerrillas were in serious decline while the paramilitaries had demobilised. Buoyed by this success, he went on to become the first president to win a second term in 2006 after a constitutional amendment allowed him to run again. He won in a landslide and, while he was wildly popular, scandal continued to follow him.
It was later revealed that key members of Congress had changed their position on the constitutional amendment after being bribed. The scandal was dubbed ‘Yidispolitica’ after the congresswoman Yidis Medina who initially voted against the amendment before voting for it at the last minute.
Due to the pressure being brought to bear on them by government forces, the FARC were not able to meet in person for their Ninth Guerrilla Conference in 2007 and instead it was held over the internet. They outlined their Plan Renacer or Plan Rebirth, reverting to classic guerrilla warfare featuring small battle groups. Government forces prevented them from reoccupying the middle of the country but, without the added threat of the paramilitaries, the guerrillas were able to regroup somewhat from the ravaging they had taken over previous years.
The fumigation of coca plantations in Caquetá y Putumayo led the FARC to push west towards the Pacific coast and into conflict with the ELN. A non-aggression agreement was reached in 2005 but that didn’t last long as violence between the two guerrilla groups spiked going into 2007, with the FARC accusing the ELN of making an alliance with Wilber ‘Jabón’ Varela and the Rastrojos. The ELN’s domination in Arauca had also been threatened by the FARC and distrust between the seemingly ideological partners had reached its peak. They eventually made a truce in Arauca in 2010.
During Uribe’s second term, the presidential palace, Casa de Nariño, was later described by one prosecutor as a ‘criminal enterprise’ where narco-paramilitaries gathered to plot against magistrates, opposition leaders and journalists critical of his government. It became known as the ‘Casa de Nari’ after demobilised paramilitary attaché Antonio ‘Job’ López left a meeting at the palace and referred to it as such in a telephone conversation with another paramilitary. The meeting, which took place in April 2008, was supposedly set up to talk about an alleged plot by the Colombian Supreme Court to incriminate the president with paramilitary connections.
Soon after, in May 2008, President Uribe extradited 14 paramilitary bosses, including Don Berna, Salvatore Mancuso, Jorge 40 and Hernán Giraldo. A few others of note included Ever Veloza, known as ‘Hernán Hernández’ or ‘HH’, who was the right-hand man of Vicente Castaño. Juan Carlos Sierra, known as ‘El Tuso’ or ‘The Cunning’, was a pure narco who was brought into the demobilisation process by his friend Don Berna and who would later testify that Álvaro Uribe was involved in a conspiracy with the DAS and former paramilitary leaders to discredit Colombia’s Supreme Court. Ramiro ‘Cuco’ Vanoy was an esmeraldero from Boyacá before linking up with the Medellín Cartel while he later bought a paramilitary bloc from the Castaño’s. Francisco Zuluaga known as ‘Gordo Lindo’ or ‘Cute Fat Man’ was a drug trafficker who worked with Fabio Ochoa and Alejandro Bernal before paying Vicente Castaño to join the paramilitaries and demobilise as a way to clear his name.
The mass extradition was a very controversial move by Uribe that was seen as silencing the paramilitary bosses who were revealing their links with politicians, police and military officers as well as businessmen. The United States is more concerned with drug-trafficking crimes as opposed to Colombia’s concern with crimes against humanity. This move essentially precipitated the rise of the BACRIM as ex-paramilitary fighters once again took up arms in the face of this betrayal.
A couple of months later in July 2008, Antonio ‘Job’ López was assassinated at an exclusive restaurant in Las Palmas in Medellín. He had reputedly been in line to take over as boss of the Oficina de Envigado.
A plethora of people linked to Álvaro Uribe have succumbed to justice in recent years over their paramilitary ties, such as lottery queen Enilce ‘La Gata’ López who donated to Uribe’s presidential campaigns. La Gata is alleged to have had a close relationship with drug boss and financier of paramilitary groups, Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. She managed some of his properties including that in Tolú where he was killed. It is also alleged that her fortune came from secret stashes of money owned by the drug lord which she took after his death. She has denied these accusations. Regardless, she prospered in her own right, eventually dominating the lottery business along with her husband, an ex-policeman from Boyacá.
Her progression to the side of the right-wing paramilitaries was a natural one. After achieving success, she began being extorted by the FARC who kidnapped her father. A ransom was paid and he died a couple of months after being released. The FARC also kidnapped her husband, who was released after a ransom was paid, while three of her brothers were killed by the guerrillas.
She was accused of laundering money for paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso, although both denied this. After further investigations were made, she was detained in 2006 and eventually sentenced to nine years in prison for her paramilitary ties and another 37 years for murder. However, after reportedly being poisoned in jail, which seriously affected her health, she was given home detention. But this was home detention with a difference as it covered three of her residences in Magangué, Cartagena and Barranquilla – an area of about 500 kilometres!
People in Uribe’s inner circle were also convicted of crimes, including the president’s security chief Mauricio Santoyo and the president’s general secretary Bernardo Moreno. In 2012, Santoyo was sentenced to 13 years in jail in the United States for providing assistance to the paramilitaries. In 2015, Moreno was sentenced to eight years of home detention for his role in a wiretapping scandal, dubbed the ‘Colombian Watergate’, in which the Supreme Court, journalists and political opponents of Uribe were spied upon.
While many people who worked around him now sit in jail, it is Álvaro Uribe who is considered the one person most responsible for turning the country around. He absolutely hammered the guerrillas, cutting their numbers by more than half which helped to dramatically improve the security situation and in turn led to greater investment and opportunities in the country. He also extradited a record number of drug traffickers, making it clear to both Colombians and Americans that he was tough on crime. An unsuccessful attempt was made to amend the constitution that would have allowed him to run for a third term which he would likely have won. Despite all the scandals and accusations, nothing has ever been proven in a court of law against him and his approval rating of nearly 80 percent by the time he left office is testament to a job well done.
One of President Uribe’s greatest successes was the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and three American contractors on 2 July 2008. Known as Operation Checkmate, a mole had infiltrated the upper ranks of the FARC and helped convince the rebel bosses to transfer the hostages to another guerrilla camp. Posing as members of a humanitarian organisation and news reporters, Colombian soldiers landed a helicopter in a clearing i
n the southern jungle of Guaviare to expedite the transfer and pick up the 15 hostages, including police and military officers as well as two guerrillas. Once on board the guerrillas were subdued and the rescuers announced to the hostages, ‘We are the army. You are free.’ It was the end of their nightmare.
It later emerged that Ingrid Betancourt was not well liked by a couple of the American contractors. In a book written by the three rescued Americans, Out of Captivity, Keith Stansell accused her of being self-obsessed and arrogant and called her ‘the most disgusting human being I’ve ever encountered’. He claims she stole food from other hostages and put their lives in danger by telling the guerrillas they were CIA agents. Thomas Howes also stated she was very manipulative and only interested in herself. Marc Gonsalves became romantically involved with Betancourt during their captivity and, while he eventually fell out with her, maintains he has nothing against her.
Betancourt is also not well liked by the Colombian people after she sued the Colombian government for damages in 2010, claiming emotional distress and loss of earnings. This was despite being warned not to travel in the area where she was kidnapped. Perhaps Pablo Escobar was right to be indignant at self-serving and arrogant politicians!
Clara Rojas, Betancourt’s campaign manager, was freed earlier in January 2008 as part of Operation Emmanuel, named in honour of the boy she gave birth to while in captivity. The father, a FARC guerrilla who guarded the hostages, was executed by the guerrillas as it is prohibited for them to have relations with hostages. Rojas also fell out with Betancourt after tensions arose during their captivity.
The year 2008 was a standout during Uribe’s presidency. Many other hostages were released, including Gloria Polanco de Lozada and Jorge Gechem Turbay, while anti-FARC marches demanding the release of all hostages took place around the country. Raúl Reyes was killed in the attack on Ecuadorean territory in early March, while Manuel Marulanda died of a heart attack later the same month which led to Alfonso Cano assuming the FARC leadership.
