By Hugh Bronstein BOGOTA, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Colombian Sen. Alvaro Araujo, brother of the country's foreign minister, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of financing drug-running paramilitaries who have committed atrocities in a dirty war against leftists. Arrest orders were also issued for five other lawmakers allied to President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative U.S. ally popular for his crackdown on Marxist rebels fighting a four-decade-old insurgency. For years, the right-wing paramilitaries have boasted about their influence in Congress, but Araujo is the highest-profile politician to be arrested as part of the widening "para-political" scandal. Araujo, brother of Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo, was taken into custody while eating at a fashionable Bogota shopping center. "This arrest is of the utmost gravity, as it reflects the penetration of paramilitary power into Uribe's closest circles," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for New York-based Human Rights Watch. The paramilitaries were organized as private militias in the 1980s to help protect private property from leftist rebels. Both groups, branded terrorists by Washington, fund themselves with Colombia's multibillion-dollar cocaine trade. Three other Uribe-friendly lawmakers were jailed in November as part of the probe and face trial. The president's popularity remains above 70 percent despite the scandal. More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns over the past three years in a deal promising them reduced prison terms and other benefits. Human rights groups say the paramilitaries were not forced to dismantle their criminal networks as part of the accord. Colombia, which has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid aimed in large part at combating the drug trade, is asking the international community to help fund education, job training and other programs for demobilized paramilitaries. "These arrests are a step in the direction of showing the United States and Europe that that they can support the peace process in Colombia because the country is becoming more transparent," said Pablo Casas, an analyst with Bogota think tank Security and Democracy. "Everyone knew the paramilitaries had infiltrated Congress," he added. "The good news is that the justice system is showing a certain level of independence."
