Santiago Uribe has been detained on charges that he created and led a death squad known as the Twelve Apostles in the 1990s

The brother of Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe has been arrested on charges that he created and led a death squad known as the Twelve Apostles, which was responsible for dozens of murders in the province of Antioquia.

Santiago Uribe was arrested on Monday in the upscale neighbourhood of El Poblado despite efforts by his security detail to block his detention.

Uribe, the younger brother of the former president, has denied that he was involved in either the death squad or the murders that witnesses said were planned at the Uribe family ranch in the town of Yarumal in the 1990s.



Supporters of ex-president Uribe, who is now a senator for the opposition Centro Democrático Party, decried the arrest. “This is a political prosecution that are part of the macabre objectives of a government that is complicit with criminals,” Paloma Valencia, also of the Centro Democrático, told local radio.

However Sen. Iván Cepeda, of the leftwing Polo Democrático, who has written several books about the Uribe family’s alleged links to paramilitaries, said it merely showed that “no one is above the law.”

The main witness against Uribe is a former police officer Juan Carlos Meneses who is under investigation for participating in the crimes attributed to the Twelve Apostles and who has identified Uribe as one of the leaders of the group which aimed to neutralize leftwing guerrillas in the region.

Meneses has testified that when he arrived in the region as local police chief in 1994 he was obliged to collaborate with the group that kidnapped and forcibly disappeared suspected guerrillas, thieves and kidnappers.

The former police major said Uribe, who is a cattle rancher and horse breeder, ran the death squad from a ranch called La Carolina using short-wave radios. Meneses said he once saw 15 uniformed paramilitaries with AR-15 and AK-47 rifles at the ranch doing physical training on an obstacle course.

Uribe’s defence team has argued the accusations were part of a plot against him and have accused the former police officer of false testimony. Meneses, who surrendered to Colombian authorities after living abroad said he had no evidence linking the former president to the death squad.

However testimony from former paramilitary leaders, such as Salvatore Mancuso who is currently serving a 16 year sentence in the United States, has bolstered the case against Santiago Uribe.

The former president has also been dogged by allegations that he also had ties to rightwing paramilitary groups which expanded their control in Antioquia when he was governor of the province. However, he denies the allegation and no direct evidence of links has been found.

In October the attorney general asked the Supreme Court to investigate whether Alvaro Uribe was linked to the massacre of at least 15 people in 1997 in the town of El Aro, when he was governor, based on testimony of former paramilitary leaders who said he was involved.

Regional paramilitary groups rose up in the late 1980s and early 1990s as private armies financed by large landowners and drug traffickers to fight against extortion and kidnapping by leftist guerrillas. After a nationwide expansion they came together in 1997 under the umbrella of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) and became a major military and political force in Colombia’s long-running conflict.

More than 30,000 AUC fighters demobilised between 2003 and 2006, under Alvaro Uribe’s first term as president, and most of its leaders were extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges.

The former partner of another Uribe brother was extradited to the United States and convicted in 2014 on drug related charges. Dolly Cifuentes, alias “la Menor”, is serving a nearly five-year sentence for cocaine smuggling. She has two children with Jaime Alberto Uribe.

