Colombia: Documents Suggest Uribe Family Drug Link

A justice minister -- later assassinated -- complained in the 1980s that drug dealing had infiltrated politics, possibly even the Uribe family, documents showed. This is not the first time in recent months evidence of this sort has come out. Add that to the terrorism angle of these associates and you have the US's model "good guy" President in the region.

BY GERARDO REYES
El Nuevo Herald

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Colombia's former justice minister who led a campaign against drug trafficking in the 1980s, once said President Alvaro Uribe and his father were models of how Colombian society had been infiltrated by drug dealers, according to legal documents obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

In a sworn declaration made in 1984, Lara Bonilla's sister declared that he had cited the case of a helicopter that had been captured in a huge cocaine laboratory in the south of Colombia that, according to government information, was owned by the president's father, Alberto Uribe Sierra. He had made the statement just weeks before his assassination by ''sicarios'' from the Medellín Cartel.

President Uribe has denied any wrongdoing by either himself or his father and family, saying that the helicopter had been sold a month before the seizure. But there is no document showing the transfer of the chopper in the aeronautics registry.

Lara Bonilla's son and Colombia's current anticorruption czar, Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, told El Nuevo Herald that neither he nor his brothers had read the files of his father, who was killed in April 1984.

''Now that I know [of] these documents, I believe it is a delicate topic, and I will give a declaration the next few days,'' he said.

Weeks before he was assassinated, Lara Bonilla complained about drug traffickers infiltrating all sectors of society. His remarks weren't generic. They came with names, dates and places....
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