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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Sat May 26, 2018, 03:29 PM May 2018

Declassified US cables link Uribe to Colombia drug cartels

Source: Associated Press

Joshua Goodman, Associated Press
Updated 1:04 pm, Saturday, May 26, 2018



Photo: Fernando Vergara, AP
Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe stands between Ivan Duque, presidential candidate for Democratic Center party, right, and his running mate Martha Lucia Ramirez during a campaign rally in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, May 20, 2018. Colombians will go to the polls on May 27 for a first round presidential election.


BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — As Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's most powerful politician, was making his rise to the presidency more than two decades ago, U.S. officials were repeatedly told that the up-and-coming politician had ties to the nation's drug cartels, according to newly declassified State Department cables.

The cables were obtained and released Friday by the National Security Archive, a non-profit group, as Uribe's handpicked candidate, Ivan Duque, is the frontrunner in polls to win Sunday's presidential election.

They describe meetings between 1992 and 1995 between American officials and Uribe as well as other Colombian politicians in his then Liberal Party.

In one 1993 cable, then Senator Luis Velez told a U.S. Embassy political officer that Uribe was a cousin of the Ochoa crime family that partnered with Escobar and had financed his political campaigns.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Declassified-US-cables-link-Uribe-to-Colombia-12945699.php





George W. Bush awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Álvaro Uribe





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