Bogotá, December 4 (teleSUR-RHC)-- Colombian police have arrested eight people involved in selling arms to paramilitaries and drug trafficking organizations, including five former and current security officials.

The detainees include one active army officer, one retired noncommissioned army officer, three former police officers, and three other civilians, announced prosecutors on Wednesday.

According to officials, the detainees were part of two arms trafficking rings accused of stealing weapons, ammunition and explosives from army barracks and selling them to groups connected to the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia or AUC. The group is also accused of receiving arms and parts from international arms trafficking networks.

The AUC was responsible for much of the violence in the country and committed numerous human rights violations, particularly from 1997-2006. The group was officially demobilized in 2006 under a pact with the government, however successor groups continue to exist and operate across the country, according to human rights organizations.

The arrests were carried out in Bogotá, where officials also found a small factory that assembled imported rifles, grenade launchers and machine guns. Other arrests were made in the cities of Villavicencio, Meta, Barrancabermeja, Santander, and Funza, Cundinamarca.

The arrests were part of a larger investigation into corrupt officials and trafficking circles which began in 2012. In March 2014, 14 members of the military, active and retired, were arrested.
     
Security officials in Colombia have long been suspected of corruption. The current arrests also come at the same time as the Attorney General opened an investigation into the illegal wiretapping by police of local journalist Vicky Davila Hoyos.

According to Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre, one hypothesis is that police carried out the wiretapping is related to the journalist's investigations and past reports into cases of corruption in the National Police.