By Hugh Bronstein BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Three Colombian members of Congress were arrested on Thursday for financing right-wing paramilitaries, marking the first time that lawmakers have been jailed for having links with the cocaine-smuggling militias. Sens. Alvaro Garcia and Jairo Merlano were taken into custody along with lower house member Erik Morris, the Supreme Court said in a statement. All three are from the northern province of Sucre and belong to parties that help form President Alvaro Uribe's coalition in Congress. "This move gives credibility to Colombia's policy of either disbanding or prosecuting the paramilitaries," said Francisco Leal, political analyst at Bogota's University of the Andes. Uribe, a staunch Washington ally, has been criticized for giving soft treatment to the paramilitaries, more than 31,000 of whom have turned in their guns in exchange for benefits including reduced prison sentences. Human rights groups say the deal was so lenient that it allowed the militias to preserve their criminal networks despite well publicized ceremonies in which fighters handed over their automatic rifles. The paramilitaries were organized in the 1980s to help landowners fight off leftist rebels waging a decades-old insurgency, which is partly funded by this Andean country's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade. By the 1990s the "paras" were notorious for massacring peasants suspected of cooperating with the guerrillas. "These arrests could be the opening of a process by which the links between the paramilitaries and the Colombian elite are finally revealed," said political commentator Ricardo Avila. "We are probably going to see more names.. There is going to be a lot of fallout." Files found in the laptop computer of one northern Colombian paramilitary leader, Rodrigo Tovar, alias Jorge 40, show how he pretended to disband more fighters than he actually did while secretly keeping up his life of extortion and murder. The computer, seized by investigators earlier this year when Tovar was taken into custody, contains evidence of long-suspected links between paramilitaries and all levels of government.
