After 57 days of hearings in the courts of Paloquemao in Bogotá, Álvaro Uribe, the most powerful man in Colombia between 2000 and 2008, He has been convicted of the crime of bribery. “Álvaro Uribe Vélez is a convicted citizen,” the newspaper ´The spectator ‘titled to account for the political impact. Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia Aranda considered that the leader of the Democratic Center offered through the emissaries a series of benefits to people deprived of liberty to favor it in other processes facing the former president against him. “The bribe in criminal action has been accredited“The judicial authority remarked. In turn, the manipulation of witnesses to be linked to the left -wing senator Iván Cepeda with illegal facts was proven.
The conviction was felt in the air in the early hours of the last hearing. “The law cannot tremble in the face of noise and justice does not kneel against power,” Heredia Aranda said and analysts understood that the unfavorable sentence was about to be communicated. He also referred to the pressures against him and the condition of women. “The toga has no gender, but character And when a woman manages justice, she does it with the same rigor or even more than any other judicial official. “The Corporation Judges and Magistrates of Colombia immediately requested the protection of Heredia Aranda to” guarantee “the” fulfillment of their functions. “
Because the audience has not finished and other positions must be analyzed, Colombians had to wait to know what is the verdict related to the other five facts for which Uribe was charged. Therefore, the scope of the penalty is missing. The case was activated 11 years ago when Uribe denounced before the Supreme Court to Cepeda for abuse of public function, procedural fraud and aggravated slander. Four years later, the high court estimated that the accusation lacked evidence and, in a turn that was surprising, said it should be the ex -president who had to respond to justice.
The role of witnesses
´The spectator ‘highlighted the forcefulness of one of the witnesses convened by the Prosecutor’s Office, Juan Guillermo Monsalve, aka Guacharaco, son of an former butler of one of the farms of the former president in Antioquia. Monsalve told Cepeda that on that Uribe farm and his family supposedly promoted the creation of the Metro block, a paramilitary ultra -right formation.
The lawyer Diego Cadena contacted Guacharaco in February 2018 to offer him benefits in exchange for his retraction before the courts. Monsalve recorded that conversation with a spy watch and its content was key piece throughout the process. It could also be found that an old friend of Monsalve, Carlos López, known as Caliche, also tried to persuade him that he retracte on behalf of Uribe. An exparamilitary, Carlos Enrique Vélez, aka Víctor, provided evidence related to an attempt to bribe Diego Cadena to declare in favor of Uribe.
For the portal ´The empty chair `it is” an unpublished criminal process against a former president in the recent history of Colombia and that although given Polarization will little change the immediate perception that Colombians already have their innocence or guilt in this case or on their legacy, it will have immediate political effects. “The sentence enervated the Colombian right has described as outrageous. The presidential senator and candidate of the Democratic Center, María Fernanda Cabalspoke of a “Infamia failure. “
