BOGOTA (AFP) — A cousin of President Alvaro Uribe sought for alleged links to right-wing paramilitary squads turned himself in Tuesday, after Costa Rica denied him asylum at its embassy, an AFP reporter said.
Mario Uribe surrendered to Attorney General officials at the embassy, where he went to in the morning and waited for nine hours for an answer to his political asylum request.
The Costa Rican Foreign Ministry turned him down, saying his asylum bid was "inadmissible," and stressing that the "historical tradition of asylum must not be defiled" by somebody charged with promoting outlawed armed groups.
The former lawmaker was escorted out of the embassy and driven away in a van amid a throng of reporters and human rights activists who were demanding Costa Rica give him up.
Uribe was taken to a holding facility at the Attorney General's office.
President Uribe said in a statement that he was in "pain" over his cousin's arrest, but said that would neither interfere with his responsibilities nor impede "other branches of government" from carrying out their duties.
"I assume this pain with patriotism," he said.
Mario Uribe presided over Colombia's senate until October 2007, when a Supreme Court investigation into ties between the paramilitaries and politicians uncovered information linking him to land purchases from the paramilitaries.
The investigation has linked 62 politicians to the paramilitaries. Of those, 31 former or current legislators have been jailed.
One of the main witnesses against Mario Uribe is Jairo Castillo (nicknamed 'Pitirri'), a former paramilitary fighter who took refuge in the United States.
Castillo claims that Mario Uribe met several times with leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) to help take over land in northern and north-eastern Colombia.
The current president of Colombia's Congress, Nancy Gutierrez, is also being investigated for alleged paramilitary ties.
The US-based Human Rights Watch earlier issued a statement urging Costa Rica to turn over Uribe to Colombian authorities.
"It's utterly absurd for Mario Uribe, one of Colombia's most powerful politicians, to claim he is somehow a victim who needs asylum," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
"On the contrary, Colombia's judicial authorities deserve international support in investigating paramilitaries' infiltration of the political system."
The paramilitaries are far-right militias formed in the 1980s to protect wealthy Colombian landowners against leftist guerrillas, and have been accused of drug-trafficking and atrocities against civilians.
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