The former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), one of the most influential politicians of this century in the country, will be brought to criminal trial for alleged witness tampering in an investigation into his participation in paramilitary groups.
“Based on the evidence (…) a prosecutor delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice filed an indictment against former senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez as the alleged perpetrator of the crimes of bribery of witnesses and procedural fraud,” the Prosecutor’s Office indicated this 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 process that he himself initiated and that has become a judicial boomerang.
It all started in 2012, when the then senator filed a complaint against the left-wing congressman Iván Cepeda, whom he accused of an alleged plot hatched with false witnesses to link him with far-right paramilitary groups, responsible for atrocious human rights violations in their clandestine war against leftist 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 high magistrates went further and In August 2020 they ordered house arrest of the former president, while they advanced their investigation.
Uribe then resigned from the Senate and his file went to an ordinary court, which lifted the detention order against him and restarted the entire process.
Cepeda received the call to trial “with great serenity but also satisfaction,” he told state television station RTVC.
“It has been more than a decade, practically 12 years, of fighting in front of the courts of law (…)after so 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 weakened the guerrillas, has not reacted to his call for trial, a decision that he had anticipated since October 2023.
At that time he accused “vices” in the process against him.
“President Uribe is innocent, the only thing he did was seek to defend himself from the search for fabricated testimonies against him,” said Senator Paloma Valencia, of the right-wing party founded by Uribe, Centro Democrático, on Tuesday.
Diego Cadena, one of the former president’s lawyers in the case, also faces a trial for allegedly having offered money to a former paramilitary to recant from testifying against Uribe.
The attorney general’s office had asked the court to archive this case on several occasions, a request that several judges rejected on the grounds that there was sufficient evidence to bring Uribe to trial.
“This determination took into account new elements of evidence, such as the statements of (…) Juan Guillermo Monsalve,” a former paramilitary who claims to have received messages from Cadena and other emissaries from Uribe. asking for a change in his testimony, the prosecution said.
The research entity recently changed its address. Lawyer Luz Camargo took over the reins of the organization a couple of weeks ago. The jurist was chosen by the Supreme Court from a shortlist proposed by left-wing president Gustavo Petro, Uribe’s historic enemy.
Uribe He has several cases open before justice.
In November of last year he testified before the prosecution in a preliminary investigation into his alleged advance knowledge of a massacre and the murder of a human rights defender.
The investigation stems from the testimony of former paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso, extradited from Colombia to the United States in 2008, during the Uribe government.
He was also denounced before an Argentine court for his alleged responsibility in more than 6,000 executions and forced disappearances of civilians committed between 2002 and 2008, under his government, a case known as “false positives.” The justice of that country has not yet ruled on the case.