Colombian judge frees key player in 'para' scandal

Medellin`s Mayor Sergio Fajardo (R) speaks with Brazilian Governors Sergio Cabral of Rio de Janeiro (L) and Aecio Neves of Minas Gerais in a metro train system in Medellin, Colombia March 23, 2007.

by Patrick Markey
BOGOTA, March 23

A Colombian judge on Friday freed President Alvaro Uribe's former intelligence chief weeks after he was jailed on suspicion of colluding with illegal paramilitaries in a growing political scandal.

Jorge Noguera, former head of Colombia's Administrative Security Department or DAS agency, was detained in February on charges he cooperated with paramilitaries who are accused of massacres and atrocities in Colombia's long-running conflict.

Noguera is a key player in a scandal linking some allies of Uribe to the paramilitaries who were started in the 1980s by rich landowners looking for protection from Marxist rebels fighting Latin America's oldest insurgency.

"I am completely innocent and I have always said that," Noguera told a mob of reporters as he left a Bogota prison. "It has always been easier to condemn rather than absolve."

Judge Leonor Perdomo, a member of a council that reviews appeals, had ordered the former DAS commander released after ruling he had been detained illegally on an arrest warrant from the attorney general's office.

A spokesman for the council of judges where Perdomo is a member said the decision was based on legal and technical errors. He added that Noguera could be re-arrested.

Noguera was charged with using his position in the country's top intelligence department to aid the paramilitaries.

Eight pro-Uribe lawmakers and a regional governor have been also jailed on charges they helped finance, organize or support former paramilitary commanders who have now disarmed under a peace deal with the Uribe government.

Uribe, who has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight rebels and the illicit drug trade, says he welcomes the probe to cleanse his government. The suspected ties to the paramilitaries date before his presidency.

More than 31,000 fighters from Colombia's paramilitary movement have handed over their weapons under a 2003 peace deal with Uribe that grants short jail terms for full confessions and compensation for their victims.

Human rights groups have long accused the militia warlords of working with politicians and army officers to murder, kidnap and steal land in the name of fighting rebels. But revelations about their ties to the political elite are surfacing as investigators probe their crimes.