Colombian lawmaker jailed in growing scandal

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A Colombian congressman and member of President Alvaro Uribe's coalition was sent to jail for six years on Wednesday for his links to illegal right-wing militias, the first lawmaker to fall in a spreading scandal.

Sixteen other members of Congress, most allied to the conservative Uribe, are in detention awaiting trial over dealings with drug-running paramilitaries who have terrorized Colombia since the 1980s in the name of fighting rebels.

The investigations have damaged Uribe's standing overseas. U.S. congressional Democrats, concerned about his human rights record, say the scandal has contributed to their decision to block a Colombian free trade deal.

The first legislator to be sentenced was lower house member Erik Morris of the northern province of Sucre, convicted of using paramilitary thugs to pressure voters into electing him.

"The court found him guilty of criminal conspiracy and imposed a sentence of six years in prison," said Colombia's Supreme Court, which judges public officials.

Uribe's cousin and long-time political ally Mario Uribe, who recently resigned from the Senate, is being investigated as part of the growing "para-political" scandal.

The president's former security chief Jorge Noguera is accused of providing paramilitaries with a death list of union leaders and human rights workers.

But Uribe, an ally to Washington, remains popular in his Andean country for cutting urban crime and spurring economic growth as part of his U.S.-backed crackdown on leftist guerrillas.

More than 30,000 paramilitaries have turned over their guns in a peace deal offering them reduced jail terms for crimes including massacre, torture and cocaine trafficking.

The rebels, who promised this month to release several of the kidnap victims they have held in the jungle for years, are still fighting the state.

Police said three officers were killed late on Tuesday when the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked a town in the southern province of Cauca.

The FARC says it is poised to release former Congress member Consuelo Gonzalez, who was snatched in 2001; one-time vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas, taken in 2002; and Rojas's son Emmanuel, fathered by one of her rebel captors.

(Editing by John O'Callaghan)