Former Colombian Senator Alvaro Castro, who was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for ties to paramilitaries, has been released on probation, newspaper El Tiempo reported Wednesday.
In March 2010 Alvaro Araujo Castro was convicted of conspiring with former paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40,” to intimidate voters with violence in the lead-up to the 2002 elections.
Initially, the former senator was moved from La Picota prison in Bogota to a medium-security prison in his home department of Cesar after several relapses in health due to his cerebral ischemia, a disease in which the brain doesn’t receive a sufficient flow of blood.
In August, the inspector general acquitted Araujo in the disciplinary process, concluding that any pacts with the paramilitary boss were made not by him directly, but through his political movement “Alas.”
In November, a judge granted him home imprisonment in the municipality of Valledupar.
The judge’s decision to let Arauja out on parole was made January 28.