Colombia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday dropped a criminal case against Bogota’s mayor Gustavo Petro who was being investigated for allegedly bribing a paramilitary fighter who had implicated former President Alvaro Uribe in a 1997 massacre.
The investigation was called for by then-Senator Petro in 2008, following accusations that Petro and former senator Piedad Cordoba had been manipulating a former member of the paramilitary organization AUC.
Paramilitary fighter Francisco Villalba had accused Uribe of “participating” in the El Aro massacre, which took place in 1997 in the village of El Aro in the department of Antioquia, where Uribe was governor at the time.
Villalba was subsequently murdered in 2009.
According to Uribe there were indications that Petro bribed Villalba so that he would implicate Uribe more closely in a scandal sparked by ties between the AUC and hundreds of politicians.
The criminal chamber of the high court said that there was no clear evidence that Petro and Cordoba had bribed the paramilitary.
