US cables: Colombia’s ex-president suspected of militia ties

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A high-level U.S. Department of Defense official strongly suspected that Colombia’s then-President Álvaro Uribe – now under house arrest – had a history of dealings with violent paramilitaries, according to a newly declassified memo from his early years in office. The document is among a batch of records shared with The Associated Press by the nonprofit National Security Archive, which contends it is the first to show that concerns about Uribe’s potentially unsavory ties with armed groups hired by wealthy landowners to protect them from guerrillas reached the highest levels of the Pentagon. “Uribe almost certainly had dealings with the paramilitaries (AUC)...