Botero Zea has been the subject of an international manhunt since last week, when Colombia’s Supreme Court upheld his conviction on charges of pocketing almost US$500,000 (euro385,445) from the 1994 campaign of Ernesto Samper, whose drug-tainted election bid he ran.

In a written statement Tuesday, Botero Zea called the charges “political revenge,” and said he would fight them.

“I have decided to take my case to the Inter-American Human Rights Court,” which operates under the framework of the Organization of American States, he wrote. However, the case would first have to go to the rights commission.

“This is a political revenge for events that happened 13 years ago,” he said. “This result of this trial is essential for Samper’s effort to clean up his tarnished image ... and seek re-election as president.”

“I am in Mexico,” he said, when contacted via a relayed telephone call in which it was impossible to determine his area code. If returned to Colombia, he must serve a 30-month jail sentence. He claimed there had been “serious irregularities” in his trial.

“I trust that time, and international organizations, will finally prove that I am right,” he said in the statement.

On Friday, Colombian authorities said they had issued a notice through Interpol to 189 countries to locate Botero. Oscar Galvis, a spokesman for the DAS intelligence agency, said at the time that if he steps foot in the country he’ll be immediately arrested.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ratified a lower court’s conviction of Botero, who resigned as Colombia’s defense minister in 1995 and in 1996 was sentenced to five years in prison for accepting campaign donations from drug traffickers.

The former president has long maintained that he did not know what his campaign manager.

Botero’s father is famous throughout the world for his paintings and statues of rotund human figures and W Radio in Bogota reported that Botero was accompanying the artist at the inauguration of an exhibition in Quebec, Canada.

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