COLOMBIAN SENATOR FACES DOWN PARAMILITARIES

Ex-Guerrilla Gustavo Petro Risked All to Prod the Government to Look
into Officials' Ties to Illegal Militias. Dozens in Congress Could Be Charged.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Some may object to his politics, but few question
the courage of leftist Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, whose five-year
campaign to prod the government into investigating elected officials'
links to illegal paramilitary groups finally bore fruit this month.

Colombia's Supreme Court issued arrest orders for three sitting
members of Congress and one former member as well as an ex-governor
on charges including murder, electoral fraud and diversion of public
funds in collusion with right-wing militia leaders. All charged are
from the northern state of Sucre and all but the ex-governor,
Salvador Arana, are behind bars.

Arrests of as many as 20 more Congress members may take place soon,
officials said this week.

From the floor of the legislature, Petro, a former guerrilla, has
declared repeatedly that members of Congress are up to their necks in
illegal activities with the right-wing militias in Sucre state and
has called on President Alvaro Uribe's government to investigate them.

It has come at great personal risk in a country where opposition to
the militias often is a death sentence. The Supreme Court also faces
retribution for issuing the orders, as does Prosecutor General Mario
Iguaran for requesting them.

Petro routinely receives death threats, and doesn't go anywhere
without a security escort of as many as 10 police officers. "They can
kill me at any time without the least moral or ethical reluctance,"
Petro said. "My assassin could be sitting next to me in the Senate."

One of those accused, Sen. Alvaro Garcia Romero, was charged with
having ordered militia leaders to conduct a massacre in 2000 and
murder an election monitor in 1997.

The arrests came at a delicate point in Colombia's demobilization
process, after the surrender of about 31,000 paramilitary fighters
since 2003 and as the Uribe government is beginning to prosecute their leaders.

The militias were formed in the 1980s by farmers and ranchers to
defend against leftist guerrilla attacks. But some of the private
armies took over much of the nation's drug traffic; they were labeled
terrorist organizations by the United States in the 1990s.

Recent revelations indicate that although militia leaders gave up
their arms, many retain control of criminal networks that run illicit
businesses with the aid of the local and national politicians they
have co-opted.

"What is happening is that a large part of Colombia now feels under
attack by the paramilitaries, and business interests feel
threatened," said Petro, 46, in an interview at his apartment complex
in northern Bogota, as 10 police officers stood guard below. "Maybe
this is why the charges are being brought now."

Another factor could be the information contained in a laptop
computer, seized in a government raid this year, allegedly
documenting the activities of paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar,
alias "Jorge 40." Data in the laptop were said to chronicle several
murders, continued militia activities and politician contacts made
after Tovar demobilized, a sign to critics that demobilization has
done little to curb the paramilitaries' power.

A Supreme Court official confirmed to The Times in an interview last
week that evidence from the computer was considered in the cases. "It
was just one element of evidence, but we had no reason to think it
was all an invention," the official said.

In exchange for electoral support, politicians help the
paramilitaries "accumulate wealth" by easing false documentation of
property transfers, diverting or kicking back public works contracts,
and putting the local police at the paramilitaries' service, Petro said.

Even fellow legislators who oppose Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla,
credit him for bringing the debate over paramilitary ties to the
public's attention.

"He brought these cases in Sucre to Congress, mounted the
investigations and said publicly, 'This is happening,' " said Sen.
Gina Parody, who sits on the opposite side of the aisle but has
joined with Petro in denouncing the paramilitaries' cozy relations
with some legislators. "Denouncing this illegality is very risky."

All of those charged are allies of President Uribe, whose
administration is facing one of its biggest crises because of the
political damage that further revelations and arrests could bring.

Much damage has been done. Prosecutor Iguaran told reporters that the
crisis confronting the Uribe government was worse than that faced by
then-President Ernesto Samper in 1994 when it was alleged that his
campaign received money from the Cali drug cartel.

There is no public evidence linking Uribe to paramilitaries, but the
arrests have fueled criticism that he has been too easy on militia
leaders in the pacification process, promising lenient sentences in
exchange for disarmament and confessions. Some wonder why allegations
that surfaced five years ago have taken so long to lead to charges.

Back then, before demobilization began, paramilitary leader Salvatore
Mancuso boasted that 35% of Congress was loyal to him and other
paramilitary chiefs.

"The issue facing Colombia is the nature and reach of
paramilitarism," said Cynthia Arnson, head of the Latin American
program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in
Washington. "It's a military force that has been demobilized, but
it's also a mafia-like criminal organization that has penetrated the
legal economy and begun to subvert legitimate political institutions."

Petro's detractors say he is inconsistent, and less troubled by
infractions by left-wing guerrillas than those by right-wing
paramilitaries. One high-ranking Uribe official, while expressing
admiration for Petro's outspokenness, said the senator practiced
"relative morality," adding, "There are no good deaths and bad deaths."

A native of Zipaquira radicalized in part by the overthrow of Chilean
President Salvador Allende in 1973, Petro joined the urban guerrilla
group M-19 at age 17. He was elected to his town's city council at
21, keeping his guerrilla membership a secret until then-President
Belisario Betancur and rebels signed a peace accord in 1984.

But the peace was short-lived. Petro survived torture and spent 18
months in jail from 1985 to 1987.

Shortly after he was imprisoned, M-19 rebels seized the Palace of
Justice in November 1985, a takeover that Petro says he knew nothing
about beforehand. The army's retaking of the building left dozens dead.

Upon his release from prison, Petro spent three years in hiding. "If
the army had found me, they would have killed me," he said.

Petro resurfaced in 1990, when President Virgilio Barco Vargas
declared another peace accord.

Petro was elected to Congress from Bogota in 1991 on the M-19 ticket.
But a series of slayings of his former comrades sent him fleeing
again in 1994, this time to Europe.

He returned to Colombia and was elected again to Congress in 1998. He
was reelected in 2002 before moving to the Senate this year as a
candidate for the Democratic Pole, a party he co-founded. He got the
second-most votes of any senatorial candidate.

Petro said his voice is no longer a lonely one. "Now there are many
voices and many allies. Half the Congress wants this investigation to
continue. The news media fill their pages with the allegations
against the paramilitaries."

Uncovering the truth and proceeding with investigations are crucial
to Colombia's democratic progress, he said.

"This is a crisis that either can lead us to national fragmentation,
a Balkanization as in Yugoslavia, or to the construction of a real republic."