President Uribe´s ´paramilitary´ cousin walks free from jail
Colombia´s former Congress President and cousin of Alvaro Uribe, Mario Uribe Escobar, sent to jail in 2011 for links to the country´s right-wing paramilitary groups is now a free man, having completed 54 of his 90 month sentence.
More than half of the politicians convicted as part of the 2007 Parapolitics scandal have now been released from prison, with Luis Alberto Gill and Juan Carlos Martínez Sinisterra joining Uribe as the most recent paroled ´paracos´.
Forty lawmakers in total were imprisoned, and 24 are now free having served as little as three fifths of their punishment.
Uribe is the most high profile of recent releases on account of his familial ties with the country´s ex-president. Alvaro Uribe continues to face-down rumours of his closeness to paramilitary groups, accusations that have been ever present since he took office.
In 2007, left-wing Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo coined the phrase Para-Uribismo, claiming that majority of para-politicians were Uribe supporters. Uribistas argue that paramilitary money funded the campaigns of parliamentarians across various parties and that the numbers of paras in Uribe´s coalition were proportionally similar to that of other, smaller groupings.
Mario Uribe´s release comes at an unfortunate moment for his cousin. Just yesterday news emerged Yair Kein, an Isreali mercenary, had testified that Uribe had paid to train paramilitaries in Colombia´s Magdelena Medio.
Kein´s testimony has since been discredited, but Uribe is plagued by the persistent innuendo.
In February 2011, Mario Uribe (elected senator in 2002) was found guilty by the Supreme Court of receiving aid and financial assistance from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). The group´s former commander, Salvatore Mancuso labelled (Mario) Uribe, alongside Eleonora Pineda as one of the AUC´s “socios” or partners in congress.
In 2008, Mario Uribe fled the country to seek political asylum in Costa Rica, but following sentencing served his time in Bogotá´s Picota and Medellin´s Yaramitu prisons.