Colombia - The accusations are serious. The former world-class cyclist Lucho Herrera (63) is said to have hired killers to havehis neighbors gruesomely murdered . The 1987 "Vuelta a España" winner rejects the accusations.

When drug baron Pablo Escobar plunged the country into chaos, Lucho Herrera gave the people of Colombia hope. He was the first non-European to triumph in the Tour of Spain "Vuelta a España", won stages in the "Tour de France" and was regarded as one of the best climbing specialists of the late 1980s.

However, a report by the news program"Noticias Uno" suggests that the now 63-year-old Herrera may be deeply involved in criminal activities.

According to the report, Herrera is said to have hired three paramilitaries in 2002 to make his neighbors "disappear". In his villa, he gave the men photos of the neighbors and a bundle of cash, 40,000 dollars. He himself is said to have claimed that the men were members of the left-wing guerrilla group FARC and wanted to kidnap him.

The completely innocent neighbors were taken from their homes at gunpoint on the evening of February 23, 2002 and have never been seen since.

According to the killers, they cut the victims' throats, dismembered the bodies with machetes and buried the dead on a plot of land belonging to Herrera.

But the neighbors were not guerrilla fighters, they were simple farmers. Herrera was obviously after their land, according to the murderers, who have since been sentenced to prison terms of up to 22.5 years.

"It later turned out that these people were not guerrilla militias, but that they had refused to sell their land to Lucho Herrera, which is why he had them taken away. The families of the victims stated that the missing persons were never guerrilla members," reads the protocol of horror, which is also available to"WRadio".

Lucho Herrera denies the serious accusations. He was not involved in the events that were reported, the former champion said through his lawyer. The public prosecutor's office is investigating.

From 1964 to 2016, the left-wing guerrilla organization FARC fought a brutal civil war with the Colombian government, which was allied with right-wing paramilitaries. More than 200,000 people died in the conflict, and there is still no trace of many of them today. In 2017, the FARC laid down their weapons, and since then the painful times have been dealt with.