Colombia: former president Álvaro Uribe is on trial, accused of paying bribes to witnesses

The former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), one of the most influential politicians of this century in the country, will be criminally tried for alleged witness tampering in an investigation into his participation in paramilitary groups.

“On the basis of the evidence (…) a prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice has presented an indictment against the former senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez as the alleged perpetrator of the crimes of corruption of witnesses and procedural fraud”, he indicated the Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday. in a statement, without specifying when the trial will begin, the first that a former president has had to face.

Uribe, 71 years old and who has always defended his innocence, faces a sentence of up to eight years in prison for a trial he initiated and which became a judicial boomerang.

It all began in 2012, when the then senator filed a complaint against the left-wing deputy Ivan Cepeda, accused by him of an alleged conspiracy hatched with false witnesses to link him to far-right paramilitary groups responsible for atrocious human rights violations in their clandestine war against left-wing guerrillas.

But the Supreme Court not only did he refrain from prosecuting Cepedabut began investigating the former president in 2018. The court suspected that it was Uribe, and not his opponent, who tried to manipulate witnesses.

The senior magistrates went further and In August 2020 they ordered house arrest of the former president as they continued their investigation.

Uribe then resigned from the Senate and his dossier was passed to an ordinary court, which revoked the detention order against him and restarted the entire trial.

Cepeda welcomed the summons to trial “with great serenity but also satisfaction”, he told state television RTVC.

“More than a decade has passed, practically 12 years, of fighting before the courts (…) after many attempts to close this case, because in the end the voice of justice appears”added the senator.

The president, very popular for the heavy-handed policy with which his government has weakened the guerrillas, did not react to his request for trial, a decision he had been anticipating since October 2023.

At that time he accused “flaws” in the trial against him.

“President Uribe is innocent, the only thing he did was try to defend himself from the search for invented testimonies against him,” Senator Paloma Valencia, of the right-wing party founded by Uribe, Centro Democrático, said on Tuesday.

Diego Cadena, one of the former president’s lawyers involved in the case, also faces trial for alleged murder having offered money to a former paramilitary recant from testifying against Uribe.

The attorney general’s office had asked the court to dismiss the case on several occasions, a request that several judges rejected on the grounds that there was enough evidence to bring Uribe to trial.

“This determination took into account new evidence, such as the statements of (…) Juan Guillermo Monsalve”, a former paramilitary who claims to have received messages from Cadena and other Uribe emissaries. asking for a change in his testimony, the prosecution said.

The research organization has recently changed address. Attorney Luz Camargo took over the reins of the organization a couple of weeks ago. The jurist was chosen by the Supreme Court from a list proposed by left-wing president Gustavo Petro, Uribe’s historic enemy.

Uribe He has several cases open before the justice system.

In November last year he testified before the prosecutor’s office as part of a preliminary investigation into his alleged advance knowledge of a massacre and the murder of a human rights defender.

The investigation arose from the testimony of former paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, extradited from Colombia to the United States in 2008, during the Uribe government.

He was also reported to an Argentine court for his alleged extra responsibility 6,000 executions and forced disappearances of civilians committed between 2002 and 2008, under his government, a case known as “false positives”. The justice system of that country has not yet ruled on the case.