Authorities need to step up security for two former paramilitaries who accused Colombian ex-President Alvaro Uribe of AUC links, according to Colombian congressman Ivan Cepeda.
The comments, published by Radio Caracol, came after one of the former paramilitary commanders was the subject of a prison attack. Cepeda said warnings had been given about the imminent assassination attempt but that no action was taken to protect the prisoner or his family.
Cepeda said, “In August [2011] Mr Pablo Hernan Sierra gave a statement and in September Mr John Monsalve, who worked on a farm of former President Uribe, also provided information about the ex-president’s alleged links with the AUC.
“From the moment they made these declarations known, I proceeded to ask for special security measures [for them], but months passed and I grew tired of writing. I sent some ten letters to the relevant authorities and it took an attack against Mr Monsalve for them to move him to another penitentiary,” said the congressman .
Cepeda questioned whether authorities’ security plans were sufficient and if the investigations into the threats against the two men, who could prove to be key witnesses, had advanced.
He added that the director of Human Rights Watch Americas division, Jose Miguel Vivanco, had asked the Colombian government and the former Prosecutor General, Viviane Morales, to protect the lives of witnesses whose lives were at immediate risk.
Cepeda published a new edition of his book “The Gates of Uberrimo” Tuesday, which accuses Uribe of helping to found a bloc of the AUC that carried out massacres and assassinations during his 2002-2010 tenure.