The former governor of the north-Colombian Santander department was arrested Saturday over allegations he made pacts with paramilitary organization AUC.
Hugo Aguilar Naranjo was arrested in a hotel in the departmental capital of Bucaramanga after the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office issued an arrest warrant against him.
The former governor is suspected of having made deals with paramilitary leaders of the Central Bolivar Bloc for his political gain.
The politician was barred from holding public office for twenty years over the same allegations.
The former Santander governor is one of dozens of Colombian politicians who are in trouble with the law for their ties to paramilitary groups, held responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Colombians.
Aguilar Naranjo came to fame in December 1993 when he, as a member of the police search bloc, was filmed presenting the dead body of Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar to the press and claiming he was the one who killed Colombia’s most famous criminal of all time.