Businessman linking Uribe to death squad released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking
Source: Colombia Reports
Businessman linking Uribe to death squad released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking
by Adriaan Alsema January 2, 2019
A notoriously violent neighbor and former business partner of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe has been released from jail despite admitting to drug trafficking charges, local media reported Wednesday.
Santiago Gallon was arrested in the border city of Cucuta last year after British intelligence agencies accused him of trafficking at least five tons of cocaine to Europe and the United States.
Gallon admitted to the charges but was released on Monday and allowed to be tried in liberty after a series of irregularities and delays in the investigation carried out by the prosecution office in Medellin.
Uribe’s neighbor and former business partner was first convicted and imprisoned in 1994 for ordering the assassination of football player Andres Escobar, but was later absolved after his bodyguard took the blame.
Read more: https://colombiareports.com/colombia-businessman-linking-uribe-to-death-squad-released-from-jail-despite-admitting-to-drug-trafficking/
By tossing him out into public right now, the Uribe-puppet President has signed this man's death warrant. He'll be gone in no time at all, just like one of his own earlier victims.
= new reply since forum marked as read
April 26, 2018 5:00PM EDT
Colombia: Witness Linked to Uribe Probe Murdered
Others Involved in Ex-President’s Case Threatened
(Washington, DC) – A witness connected to a criminal investigation of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez was murdered on April 14, 2018, and other witnesses have been threatened, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should redouble its protection of witnesses and their relatives.
(Uribe)
The Supreme Court ordered the investigation on February 16. Uribe, now a senator, filed a criminal complaint in 2012 against Senator Iván Cepeda, contending that he had used “fraudulent” testimony to implicate Uribe and his brother Santiago in paramilitary atrocities in the 1990s. The Supreme Court rejected the allegations against Cepeda and instead initiated an investigation into whether Uribe, who was president from 2002 to 2010, had tampered with witnesses, pressing them to say that Cepeda had bribed them to implicate the former president.
“The Criminal Chamber of Colombia’s Supreme Court has shown impressive courage in initiating this investigation of Uribe,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “But the truth may never be uncovered if the government does not ensure full protection for the witnesses and their relatives.”
Media reports indicate that two men riding a motorcycle without license plates fatally shot Carlos Enrique Areiza Arango, a former paramilitary death squad member and one of the witnesses in the case, on April 14 at a mall in downtown Bello, Antioquia.
More:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/26/colombia-witness-linked-uribe-probe-murdered
