A Colombian judge on Monday convicted former President Alvaro Uribe of abuse of process and bribery of a public official in a long-running witness tampering case, making him the country’s first ex-president to ever be found guilty at trial.
Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia read her decision aloud to the court over the course of some ten hours. She found the right-wing politician not guilty of a separate bribery charge.
The ruling, which Uribe is expected to appeal, is the latest decision in a hugely politicized case that has run for some 13 years.
The decision comes less than a year before Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, in which several of Uribe’s allies and proteges are competing for the country’s top office.
Uribe, 73, and his supporters say the process is a persecution and that he is innocent. His detractors have celebrated it as the deserved downfall for a man who has been repeatedly accused of close relationships with violent right-wing paramilitaries, but never convicted of any crime.
Each charge carries a jail sentence of between six and 12 years. Heredia is expected to sentence Uribe in a later hearing.
“Justice does not kneel before power,” Heredia told the court on Monday morning, before spending about nine hours reading her decision. “It is at the service of the Colombian people.”
“We want to say to Colombia that justice has arrived,” she said, adding that her full decision is some 1,000 pages long.
Uribe and one of his lawyers, Jaime Granados, joined the hearing via video link, while another lawyer, Jaime Lombana, appeared in person.
“This is not the end of this process, the appeal is next and we are going to demonstrate that this decision, which we respect, is wrong,” lawyer Juan Felipe Amaya, part of Uribe’s legal team, told journalists at the court.
Granados told the hearing that the presumption of Uribe’s innocence should be maintained and asked for him to remain free during the remainder of the process.
Detractors and supporters of the former president gathered outside the court, with some Uribe backers sporting masks of his face.
Even if the conviction is eventually upheld, Uribe may be allowed to serve his sentence on house arrest because of his age.
Parliamentary plot
Uribe, who was president from 2002 to 2010 and oversaw a military offensive against leftist guerrilla groups, was investigated along with several allies over allegations of witness tampering carried out in an attempt to discredit accusations he had ties to paramilitaries.
Judges have twice rejected requests by prosecutors to shelve the case, which stems from Uribe’s allegation in 2012 that leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda had orchestrated a plot to tie him to paramilitaries.
The Supreme Court said in 2018 that Cepeda had collected information from former fighters as part of his work and had not paid or pressured former paramilitaries. Instead, the court said it was Uribe and his allies who pressured witnesses.
Cepeda attended the hearing in person with his counsel.
Uribe’s trial triggered sharp criticism from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ahead of the judge’s decision. Uribe had a close relationship with the U.S. during his two terms as president.
“Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent,” Rubio said on X.
“A decision against the ex-president could generate some kind of reprisal by the government of the United States,” Banco de Bogota said in a note on Monday, referring to a proposal by US Republican lawmaker Mario Diaz-Balart to cut non-military aid to Colombia next year, partly on concerns of due process violations in the Uribe case.
Uribe, who was placed under house arrest for two months in 2020, is head of the powerful Democratic Center party and was a senator for years both before and after his presidency.
He has repeatedly emphasized that he extradited paramilitary leaders to the United States.
Colombia’s truth commission says paramilitary groups, which demobilized under deals with Uribe’s government, killed more than 205,000 people, nearly half of the 450,000 deaths recorded during the ongoing civil conflict.
Paramilitaries, along with guerrilla groups and members of the armed forces, also committed forced disappearances, sexual violence, displacement and other crimes.
Uribe joins a list of Latin American leaders who have been convicted and sometimes jailed, including Peru’s Alberto Fujimori, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez and Panama’s Ricardo Martinelli.
This is a developing story that has been updated and will be updated.
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