Colombian justice orders arrest of three legislators
Colombia's Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the arrest of two senators and a representative suspected of collaborating with the country's paramilitary fighters.

The Supreme Court of Justice said in a statement that it had issued warrants for the arrest of Senators Alvaro Garcia and Jairo Merlano and Representative Erik Morris.

Garcia and Morris belong to the Democratic Colombia party while Merlano is a member of the pro-Uribe party La U, the largest party in the governing coalition.

The court accused Garcia of murder as he "organized, promoted, armed and financed groups outside the law in the province of Sucre," and played "a decisive role" in a massacre in Macayepo on Oct. 16, 2000 and a murder on Dec. 19, 1997.

Merlano was accused of being "a member of a paramilitary group" and of receiving financial support from them for his 2002 Senate electoral campaign.

Morris, governor of the department of Sucre from 1998 to 2000, had turned the department into a stronghold of Rodrigo Pupo's forces, one of the south American country's biggest paramilitary groups.

The three lawmakers were questioned by the justice on Oct. 24.

The paramilitaries, created by landowners and drug-traffickers, surged in the 1980s to fight leftist rebels, represented by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), and extended their control over Colombia's countryside.

The leftist rebel groups have combated the government for four decades.