Colombia's foreign minister is rejecting calls for her resignation after her brother's arrest on charges of kidnapping a businessman and of working with far-right paramilitary gangs, even as the Supreme Court implicated her father in the scandal.
"It's a difficult time for me," Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo said on Friday in a hastily called news conference. "But as I've always done in my public life, I'm going to keep working with efficiency, honor, results and joy. The country needs us to work and that's what we're going to keep doing."
Senator Alvaro Araujo was one of five politicians arrested on Thursday, bringing to eight the number of federal lawmakers jailed for allegedly backing and benefiting at the ballot box from brutal intimidation by the militias, which are responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's five-decade civil conflict and much of its cocaine trade.
PHOTO: AFP
In the burgeoning scandal, more than 60 federal and regional politicians -- almost all from the Caribbean coast -- have been questioned by the Supreme Court, including the foreign minister and several members of her influential political clan.
A Supreme Court official told RCN radio on Friday that Judge Yessid Ramirez has received death threats since the court began probing links between the politicians and a paramilitaries. Attempts to reach Ramirez were unsuccessful.
The US government considers Colombia's paramilitary groups to be terrorist organizations.
The Supreme Court said on Friday it would provide prosecutors with evidence that Araujo's father -- a former agriculture minister and governor of Cesar state -- may have participated along with his son Alvaro in the kidnapping of a local businessman five years ago. The man was released after 80 days in captivity for an undisclosed ransom. Alvaro Araujo would face up to 40 years in prison if convicted.
In addition, the chief prosecutor has said the foreign minister's sister may have passed money to the paramilitaries. And Araujo's cousin, the current Cesar governor, has been called to testify as well.
All of the arrested men are from the political camp of President Alvaro Uribe, who despite the scandal remains popular for having tamed violence in Colombia's major cities and highways since he was first elected in 2002.
Uribe has stood behind his foreign minister despite demands for her resignation from the opposition, which says she should not be the public face of Colombia as the nation seeks international support for fighting leftist rebels, reducing human rights violations and diminishing the world's largest cocaine industry.
The other lawmakers arrested on Thursday were Mauricio Pimiento, Dieb Maloof, Alfonso Campo Escobar and Luis Eduardo Vives. An arrest order was issued for a sixth, Congressman Jorge Luis Caballero.
In a radio interview after his arrest, Maloof said the witnesses against him were criminals who cannot be trusted, and said the charges are based on "fallacies that are degenerating the country into a political cataclysm."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion