Colombian prosecutors arrested President Alvaro Uribe's cousin today as authorities probed his suspected ties to paramilitary death squads.
The investigation of Mario Uribe, a longtime senator and presidential confidant, is expected to fuel concerns among US Democrats who oppose a Colombian trade pact because of human rights abuses and lingering influence of ex-paramilitaries.
His arrest was ordered detained after testimony from paramilitary warlords that he asked them to back his senate campaign and help him secure cheap farmland. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Jostling with screaming protesters, police took Mario Uribe away from the Costa Rican Embassy, where he had earlier sought political asylum after the attorney general's office ordered him arrested.
Costa Rica rejected the ex-senator's petition as "inappropriate" because he had an outstanding warrant.
The arrest edges the "para political" scandal closer to President Uribe as he fends off concerns about congressional stability with more than 60 lawmakers under investigation and half of those behind bars for suspected paramilitary links.
"The arrest warrant for Sen Mario Uribe hurts me, but it is a pain I will accept with patriotism and without avoiding the fulfillment of my responsibilities," the president said in a brief statement before his cousin's arrest.
Alvaro Uribe, a close US partner, has reduced violence from Colombia's four-decades-long conflict by driving back rebels and negotiating the surrender of illegal paramilitaries who massacred peasants and dealt in cocaine in the name of counter-insurgency.
Foreign investment is growing and the economy booming. But the president has struggled recently to convince US Democrats to back a free trade deal as USlawmakers and rights groups worry over paramilitary violence and trade union murders.