Bogota, Sep 7 (EFE).- The brother of former Inspector General Edgardo Maya was arrested in connection with the killings nine years ago of two union officials in northern Colombia, the Attorney General's Office said.

Jaime Blanco Maya was detained in Valledupar, capital of the northern province of Cesar, and is suspected of arranging the murders of Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, president and vice president, respectively, of the union at a coal mine owned by U.S.-based Drummond.

The killings were carried out by members of the now-defunct AUC federation of right-wing militias, which disbanded in 2006 as part of a peace process with the government.

Locarno and Orcasita were riding in a Drummond bus with some 40 other workers on March 12, 2001, when the vehicle was intercepted by a group of armed men near the town of Bosconia.

The paramilitaries pulled Locarno and Orcasita off the bus, executing the former on the spot. The tortured body of the other union official turned up a few days later.

The man who succeeded Locarno as president of the union, Gustavo Soler, was murdered seven months after taking office.

Blanco Maya, a Drummond contractor at the time of the killings, could be charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and aggravated homicide, the AG's office said.

Former militia commander Oscar Jose Ospino was sentenced in March to 30 years in prison for the murders of the unionists.

But a U.S. civil suit against Alabama-based Drummond, accused of giving financial and other support to the militias, for the killings of Locarno, Orcasita and Soler, ended in July 2007 in an acquittal.

Separately, the former dean of the University of Cordoba was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 35 years in prison Monday for colluding with paramilitaries in the September 2000 murder of Professor Hugo Ignacio Iguaran.

Convicted along with the fugitive Victor Hugo Hernandez was militiaman Victor Alfonso Rojas, who is in custody.

Iguaran was killed at Hernandez's home in Monteria, capital of Cordoba province and seat of the university.

The AUC militia federation effectively controlled the university and the provincial government, former paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso testified in November 2008.

He also acknowledged the AUC's role in killing Iguaran, who was Hernandez's rival in the election for dean.