From the same article:

Throughout Uribe’s United States-funded Democratic Security offensive, the Colombian military worked closely with the right-wing paramilitary death squads terorizing the Colombian countryside. So-called “false positives” — extrajudicial executions of civilians later passed off as rebel combat kills — were only the most visible of the many systemic human rights abuses attributed to the military during the hardline Uribe presidency.

Similarly, Uribe’s time in office marked the height of the “parapolitics” scandal, in which significant portions of Congress and the public sector were shown to have coordinated directly with paramilitary groups responsible for much of Colombia’s astronomical rates of political violence during that period. Alvaro’s brother, Santiago, was just one of the many prominent figures from Uribe’s inner circle to become implicated in the scandal.

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Among other things, Santiago has been accused by a former high-level paramilitary commander of arranging the financial relationship between multinationals in the northern banana-growing region and the AUC paramilitary block, using the CONVIVIR “civilian intelligence” groups propogated by his brother, then the governor of the state of Antioquia, as fronts to launder money to the paramilitaries.

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Uribe’s career in Antioquia politics has also produced numerous alleged ties to the state’s infamous narco powers, including Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel, for whom Uribe, once the director of civil aviation, allegedly authorized airstrips and permits used to traffic cocaine.

Perhaps the most lasting of Uribe’s alleged offenses is his handling of the 2006 paramilitary demobilization, which the Human Rights Watch has characterized as a “sham.” Uribe’s Justice and Peace process has been cast as a mechanism to grant impunity to the worst human rights offenders in Colombia’s 50-year armed conflict, some of whom have testified against the former president, and the neo-paramilitary groups that emerged following demobilization have since taken control of the country’s narcotics and illegal mining trades.