A conservative Colombian politician who made his career being tough on drug crime is teaming up with narco-terrorists for a massive political rally, according to Colombian media.
Senator Alvaro Uribe — who was the Colombian president from 2002 to 2010 and became a senator in 2014 — is said to be getting “logistical support” from Urabeños narcos to beef up attendance for a Saturday political rally. Urabeños is one of the most active drug trafficking organizations in Colombia. The criminal organization has ties to both the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas of Mexico and “facilitate[s] cocaine shipments to North America,” according to Insight Crime.
“On the subject of drugs: firstly, drugs, does not generate freedom, it enslaves human beings,” Urbie said in 2013 at a conference, according to Mexican newspaper AM Leon. He concluded his speech saying the only way to deal with traffickers is “jail, severely.”
But this reported long-held belief on narcos wasn’t apparent this week.
The drug traffickers are said to have “hired some 100 buses to transport people” to the event, according to a source in the Prosecutor General’s Office reports Colombia Reports. News of the neo-paramilitary group teaming up with Uribe comes on the heels of the February arrest of the politician’s brother, who is accused of leading a paramilitary death squad.
This is not the first time the former president has been accused of being aligned with drug traffickers, despite his tough stance on criminal activities. According to a 1991 DIA report, Uribe was a “close personal friend of Pablo Escobar,” though the U.S. State Dept. and the Pentagon both distanced themselves from the 1991 report in 2004.
Uribe is the leader of the conservative Democratic Center party and is known to have a bitter relationship with his former political protege and current Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Santos was the Minister of Defense under Uribe’s administration.
Currently, Santos is holding peace talks with Marxist rebels the FARC — Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — and the ELN — Army of National Liberation — both groups have ties to cartels and drug trafficking. Uribe has been an outspoken critic of these talks, since his presidential administration spearheaded a plan to take down drug traffickers and Marxist rebels. Urbie’s father was murdered in 1983 by FARC rebels, and this could also play a factor in his disapproval.
The former president made his opposition to government peace talks clear in a 2014 interview with World Policy:
FARC is the largest cocaine cartel in the world. It has been the main supplier of cocaine to the Mexican cartels, therefore we cannot stand that our government negotiates the future of the policy against drugs with the largest cocaine cartel. Impunity breaks Colombia’s commitment with the International Court. Every time this country has given impunity to some terrorist it has created [amongst the youth] expectations for them to become terrorists.
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