Colombia’s former defense minister and current presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos says that former AUC boss Salvatore Mancuso accused him of having plotted a coup out of spite.
On Wednesday, the extradited AUC-head said Santos had asked previous AUC boss Carlos Castaño to organize a coup against President Ernesto Samper.
Santos, responding on Thursday on Caracol Radio, said that Mancuso made the accusations out of despair and that these accusations already had been investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office without results.
The Partido de la U candidate denied ever having proposed a coup and stressed that it was very strange that this issue was revived only one month before the presidential elections for which he is one of the main candidates.
Mancuso is currently in a U.S. jail awaiting charges for drug trafficking. His paramilitary organization is accused of having committed tens of thousands crimes against humanity before their demobilization in 2006.
