Ex-Uribe Aide Sentenced to Jail for Paramilitary, Drug Links

A Colombian court sentenced on Tuesday a top aide to former far-right Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, lead proponent of the “No” vote against the peace deal between the government and the FARC, to nine years in jail for money laundering, illicit enrichment and financial links to illegal paramilitary groups during his time in Uribe’s administration.

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Flavio Buitrago, a retired general and head of security during Uribe’s second term in office from 2006 to 2010, was charged based on accusations of accepting money from former paramilitary leader Carlos Mario Jimenez Naranjo, known by the alias Macaco, of the notorious United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, and from druglord Marco Antonio “El Papero” Gil Garzon, who are both currently serving prison sentences.

Buitrago and his wife were also unable to justify an increase in assets. Both have been sentenced to jail on fraud charges. The court sentenced Buitrago’s wife, Elba Pulido Solano, to six years.

The former official was implicated in fraud networks back in 2013, when evidence in the case against El Papero for drug trafficking flagged Buitrago’s name for having links to cartels. According to local media, the relationship between Buitrago and the jailed cartel boss date back to the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, months after El Papero was sent to jail for six years, former paramilitary operative Macaco testified from prison in the United States that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, also known as the AUC, paid Buitrago over the course of a decade from 1996, when he was a police commander in the province of Antioquia, to 2006, when he began working for Uribe’s administration.

According to the former paramilitary leader, Buitrago’s payments increased when he was named as an aide to Uribe and the official also collaborated with the AUC — specifically its unit known as the Central Bolivar Bloc — on intelligence and information sharing. Macaco is serving a 33-year jail sentence in the United States for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, handed down in 2011.

According to the former paramilitary leader, Buitrago’s payments increased when he was named as an aide to Uribe and the official also collaborated with the AUC — specifically its unit known as the Central Bolivar Bloc — on intelligence and information sharing. Macaco is serving a 33-year jail sentence in the United States for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, handed down in 2011.

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The sentencing announcement comes as social movements, such as the Marcha Patriotica, have raised alarm over what they say is a resurgence of paramilitary activity in parts of the country, including areas hardest hit by over half a century of internal armed conflict. A wave of assassinations of social leaders, including 124 murders of Marcha Patriotica members since the groups was founded in 2012, have led leaders to warn of a “new political genocide” against rural activists and human rights defenders.

Uribe, the leading opponent of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel army and president when Buitrago worked for the government, has also faced accusations of ties to paramilitary groups. His two terms in office were also marked by record-level displacement and serious human rights abuses, including the “false positives” scandal that killed more than 3,000 innocent people.

Under Uribe, the “false positives” was a concerted military strategy of murdering civilians, including homeless and mentally ill people, and dressing them in guerrilla fatigues to boost the government’s body count in the war on rebels.

The sentencing also comes as the peace process between the FARC and the government is surging forward despite opposition from Uribe’s camp. The two sides of the 52-year-old conflict unveiled an updated agreement on Nov. 12, set to be officially signed sometime this week.

The agreement brings an end to a more than five-decade civil war that has claimed the lives of some 260,000 people and victimized some 8 million more. It’s estimated that paramilitaries are responsible for more than 80 percent of civilian deaths.