Former
Colombian President’s Ranch Was Paramilitary Base, According to New Testimony

Santiago Uribe Vélez, brother of
former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, is accused of training a paramilitary
group on the Uribe family ranch, La Carolina.

Published:
Jul 9, 2018

Edited by Michael Evans

For more information, contact:

202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu 

Washington D.C., July 9, 2018 – A ranch owned by
former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez and other members of his family
was the operational base of a deadly paramilitary group, according to the
testimony of people who worked for the Uribe family in the 1990s.

 

The new evidence, which was reviewed by the National Security
Archive, is the subject of an investigation published
today in The New York Times featuring
commentary from Michael Evans, director of the Archive’s Colombia documentation
project.

 

In a series of declarations
during the past year, three former employees of “La Carolina” ranch in Yarumal,
Colombia, said that the Uribe family, and especially the former president’s
brother, Santiago Uribe, had a close and friendly relationship with the
presumed leader of the “Doce Apóstoles” (Twelve Apostles), a death squad that
prosecutors say targeted petty criminals, drug addicts and the presumed
supporters of insurgent groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

There has long been a perception
in Colombia that Álvaro Uribe’s policies, first as governor of Antioquia and
later as president, helped to foster the growth of illegal paramilitaries, which
are responsible for most of the human rights abuses committed in recent
decades. As governor of Antioquia, Uribe was one of the most prominent
proponents of state-sponsored civil militia groups known as “Convivir,” some of
which were fronts for, or worked in concert with, Colombia’s notorious
paramilitary army, the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

But these new declarations are
part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that the Uribe family was
directly involved in training and directing the operations of the outlaw
groups.

The revelations add fuel to ongoing Supreme
Court investigations of the former president’s own ties to
massacres and assassinations during the 1990s—acts the Court says are “crimes
against humanity.” Prosecutors accuse Uribe of helping to plan paramilitary
massacres in La Granja (1996), San Roque (1996) and El Aro (1997) while he was
governor of Antioquia, and the February 1998 assassination of Jesús María
Valle, an attorney and human rights defender working with victims in
those cases. Earlier this year, prosecutors announced they would open another
investigation of Uribe for witness tampering in relation to charges that he
aided in the formation of the paramilitary Metro Bloc from his Guacharacas
estate in San Roque.

 

The allegations against his brother, Santiago, follow a similar
pattern. He was first investigated for his role in creating the Twelve Apostles
in 1997, accused of training the paramilitary group at La Carolina, but the
probe was dropped in 1999 for lack of evidence. The case was reopened in 2012
after a former Colombian police official, Juan Carlos Meneses Quintero, said
that his forces carried out
assassinations in collaboration with the Twelve Apostles and
Santiago Uribe. Meneses
said the group was formed and trained at the Uribe family ranch
to “assassinate petty criminals, drug addicts, and guerrilla supporters,” the
kinds of murders often referred to as “social cleansing.” Another key witness
in the case, Eunicio Pineda Luján, who worked at a nearby ranch, said he was
tortured by the group.

 

Santiago was arrested in
February 2016 and is currently awaiting trial on charges of
murder and conspiracy.

 

The newly-available testimony about the Uribe ranch stems from the
related investigation of Jorge Alberto Osorio Rojas, currently a fugitive who prosecutors
say was a top leader of the Twelve Apostles. The witnesses were
located and questioned by investigators after Santiago Uribe provided the court
with a list of former employees of the ranch, where the family bred and raised
fighting bulls.

 

The evidence includes recorded
statements and a written summary of previous witness declarations produced by
the Colombian Judicial Police. Colombian authorities wanted to know what
workers from La Carolina knew about Osorio Rojas and his alleged criminal
activities, and whether they could help identify and locate another supposed
member of the Twelve Apostles, Iván Darío Gallego, who used the alias “El
Paisa.” Investigators also asked the witnesses about Fernando and Aide Botero,
owners of the nearby ranch known as La Isla.

Álvaro and Santiago Uribe had a
close, friendly relationship with Osorio Rojas, according to the ranch workers.
One former ranch hand said that Santiago was “very intimate” and “very
friendly” with the presumed paramilitary chief, who was also known as “Rodrigo”
and “El Mono.” Asked who gave orders to Osorio Rojas, the witness said, “It was
Santiago.”

He said that Osorio Rojas would
come and go with Santiago Uribe, and that he worked closely with El Paisa and
another presumed paramilitaries known as “Pelusa.” The former ranch hand said
he referred to Osorio Rojas and Pelusa as “paracos,” a slang term for
paramilitaries. “Because they were murderers,” he said. “Because they were
cleaning up around here.”

A former cattle handler on the
ranch said that Osorio Rojas and other presumed paramilitaries, including
Pelusa and another known as “Carlos,” would arrive at the ranch ahead of
Santiago’s visits and accompany him around the property.

Osorio Rojas, Pelusa and another
paramilitary known as “Sabino” detained and mistreated people who passed by the
ranch at night, he said; the victims were stripped, robbed and beaten. The
cattle tender said that Pelusa—who used to run a cocaine processing facility
that was later dismantled by police—would arrive in the morning with bound
hostages in his car who were later assassinated. Pelusa and the others who
accompanied Santiago during his visits to the ranch were “cleansing” the area
of bad actors, according to his recorded statement.

A former domestic worker at the
ranch said that Santiago came to the property almost every weekend, and that
former president Álvaro Uribe—who at the time was a senator and later governor
from the department of Antioquia—also visited frequently.

She said that two of her nephews,
both employees of the ranch, were kidnapped and murdered one night at La
Carolina.

“They worked there, they worked
for so many years, two brothers,” she said, before armed men showed up one
night, bound them, and took them away. They were found dead a few days later,
“with their arms tied behind their back.”

She never learned who was
responsible.

And while the ongoing criminal
investigations of the Uribe brothers and paramilitaries like Osorio Rojas have
raised hopes that such cases may eventually be solved, some are concerned that
Colombia’s president-elect, Iván Duque, will try to derail ongoing
investigations of his political mentor, Álvaro Uribe.

In a plan similar to one Uribe
proposed last year, Duque has said that he wants to restructure the
country’s high courts, one of which, the Colombian Supreme Court, is leading
the investigation into the former president’s paramilitary ties.

“There seems little doubt that Uribe’s desire is to weaken or
scuttle the rather serious investigations being brought against him and his
family,” said Michael Evans, who heads the National Security Archive’s
Colombian documentation project, in a quote provided to the Times.