President Alvaro Uribe's close political ally with alleged paramilitary ties was detained Tuesday upon leaving Costa Rica's embassy.
The federal prosecutor's office says former Sen. Mario Uribe was taken into custody by authorities hours after he entered the diplomatic office in an unsuccessful asylum bid. Mario Uribe is the second cousin and confidante of President Uribe.
Colombia's chief prosecutor ordered his arrest earlier Tuesday on charges of allegedly promoting illegal far-right militias.
The former senator, who resigned in October, is one of the most powerful officials to be enmeshed in a scandal over politicians benefiting from ties to the illegal groups.
Police, journalists and demonstrators had held vigil outside the Costa Rican Embassy on a cul-de-sac in northern Bogota all day.
Uribe, who resigned from the Senate in October when he came under formal investigation, is one of the most powerful officials enmeshed in the scandal. He has long been close to President Uribe, and in 1985 the two founded a political party together.
In a statement read by his spokesman Tuesday evening, the president said the arrest warrant "hurts me. I assume this pain with patriotism and without diminishing the fulfillment of my duties, with the sole aim of protecting institutions," including those headed by others.
The reference was to the chief prosecutor's office, which said earlier in a terse statement that it was investigating a meeting between Mario Uribe and former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso prior to the 2002 congressional elections. It was also looking into a 1998 meeting with Jairo Castillo Peralta, a former paramilitary chauffeur.
Mancuso has alleged that Mario Uribe sought his support in the 2002 Senate race. Castillo Peralta, who lives in exile, has said Mario Uribe met with paramilitary warlords in 1998 seeking cheap land near the Caribbean coast.
Mario Uribe has denied those allegations. In an April 2007 interview with The Associated Press, he called Castillo Peralta "a liar, an extortionist, a killer and a bandit."
More than 30 current or former members of the 266-member Congress, the vast majority allies of the president, have been arrested for allegedly backing and benefiting from the right-wing paramilitaries. Several dozen more are under investigation.
Among those in jail is Uribe's former chief of domestic intelligence, Jorge Noguera, who allegedly gave the paramilitaries a "hit list" of labor and opposition leaders.
President Uribe himself, however, has remained highly popular due to his get-tough approach to leftist rebels.
His political opponents said they found it difficult to believe he didn't know about Mario Uribe's alleged contacts with paramilitaries.
"More than the president's cousin, we're talking about a person who from early in the president's youth built with him the same political project," opposition Sen. Gustavo Petro said.
All five congressmen from Mario Uribe's party, Colombia Democratica, are now either in jail or under investigation for allegedly benefiting from paramilitary ties.
The paramilitaries initially formed in the 1980s to protect wealthy landowners from guerrilla kidnapping and extortion and seized control of nearly the entire Caribbean region in the late 1990s.
Like their guerrilla foes, they funded themselves chiefly via drug trafficking and are listed by the U.S. and the European Union as terrorist organizations.
President Uribe made peace with the paramilitaries in a demobilization that jailed their top leaders, who confessed in exchange for reduced jail terms and protection from extradition.
Some jailed paramilitary bosses, led by Mancuso, complain their former political patrons have unfairly escaped punishment.
