MADRID – José Alirio Colorado has been waiting two years for his application for political asylum to be processed. Earlier this month he learned that his request had been turned down, and that he will have to return to Colombia in May.

But Alirio says that he cannot return to the tiny village of Santuario, where he was mayor, after he and his family were caught up in a conflict between FARC guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries that left his brother dead, along with his bodyguard and four members of the village council.

"If I go back I'm a dead man," he says simply.

Alirio knows that 97 percent of applications for political asylum - most of them from Colombians - are turned down in Spain, but says he will appeal.

He has evidence: a small file with newspaper clippings, and even letters from the paramilitaries, one of which reads: "Greetings from our organisation... There is a limit to our patience... We give you no more than three days to leave the region, otherwise your daughters and wife will meet the same fate as your brother." It is signed by a Comandante Escobar, head of the Colombian Self-Defence Units, and dated 2004.

Alirio knows that one of the excuses given by the Spanish authorities for turning down so many asylum applications is that dossiers such as his can be bought in Colombia.

The police at Madrid's Barajas airport, along with Spain's Refugee Aid Commission (CEAR) and the UN High Commission for Refugees (ACNUR), say that organised criminals in Colombia now offer "asylum packs" for around USD 5,000.

"They introduce themselves as lawyers, or even ACNUR employees, and they sell a dossier that includes evidence of death threats from the guerrillas or the paramilitaries: letters, reports to the police, and membership of human rights organisations," says María Jesús Vega, ACNUR's spokeswoman in Spain.

 1 2 Next >