The former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe has been convicted on Monday for the crimes of bribery to witnesses in criminal action and procedural fraud. Judge Sandra Heredia has issued the sentence and has indicated that the 73 -year -old politician asked her lawyer Diego Cadena to offer benefits to different people, such as the exparamilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, so that they would give testimonies in favor of his and against the leftist congressman Iván Cepeda. “Álvaro Uribe Vélez knew the illicit of his actions,” he said at the end of his ruling, against the former president’s argument that his lawyer acted without him knowing what he was doing. The verdict is in the first instance and there is room for appeal. With the decision you live a historic day, because it is the first time in the modern history of Colombia that a former president is convicted.
The audience began with a few words of Heredia about justice. “Justice has come as it should be: Serena, reflective and without pressures,” said Judge Heredia before reading the verdict. “This trial is not a trial against political history, it is not a rematch. It is an act of justice and only justice,” he added. In addition, he has highlighted the separation between justice and politics: “We ask for respect. We ask for wiseness. We ask that this moment be understood with the maturity it deserves.”
Heredia’s words are not random: both the former president and his political allies have alleged that the evidence against him is not conclusive and that, therefore, a conviction corresponds to a lawfare. “No person can be convicted against the evidence that shows their innocence,” said Jaime Granados, defense lawyer ,.
The judge took the floor for almost all day to explain her decision and began lying one by one the arguments of the former president’s defense. He defended a conversation recorded by Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a key witness against Uribe, with a spy clock, arguing that it was false that the recording was modified. He endorsed incriminating interceptions that made the Supreme Court to Uribe by mistake, at the beginning of the investigation of that court. And he supported Monsalve as a credible person, and, on the contrary, he dismissed the credibility of the witnesses who led the defense for his contradictions. The former president was only acquitted of a third crime, of simple bribery.
The criminal trial, the first against a former president in Colombia, after almost 13 years of attempts by Uribe’s defense so that the case was archived. Although the Prosecutor’s Office supported this position for several years, when it was under the command of Francisco Barbosa – a political ally of Uribe – justice denied the request on several occasions. With the arrival of Luz Adriana Camargo to the Public Ministry, in March 2024, the entity’s approach took a radical turn and accused in May last year the ex -president of devising and supporting “a strategy aimed at manipulating the course of criminal justice, using third parties with the deliberate objective of forcing the retractions of key witnesses.”
The origin of the case dates back to 2012, when Senator Iván Cepeda accused Uribe of having links with the paramilitaries. He did it before the Congress of the Republic and with the support of the testimonies that he collected from several exparamilitaries. The key witness who supported that complaint is Juan Guillermo Monsalve, the son of the Forest of the Guacharacas, a property of the former president’s family. According to Monsalve, Uribe and his brother Santiago founded and financed the one that operated in that rural residence located in the department of Antioquia.
The verdict does not settle on whether the complaint made by Cepeda is true or not. The core of the trial focused on deciding whether the former president used his influence to try to make witnesses as Monsalve change their version and put themselves against the senator. In February 2018, Uribe’s lawyer, Diego Cadena, visited Monsalve to jail and offered judicial benefits in exchange for retracting his testimony. That was the conversation recorded by the spy clock that carried the inmate.
Given the facts, the Supreme Court of Justice suspended the investigation against Cepeda, denounced by Uribe for his accusations, and opened in 2018 a file against the ex -president of course bribery to witnesses. The magistrates ordered in August 2020 their house arrest for “possible risks of obstruction to justice.” Seeing cornered, Uribe – at that senator moment – to investigate it. Since then, the case was in the hands of ordinary justice. The ruling may be appealed by the defense of Uribe. In this case, which is already taken for granted, it will be the Superior Court of Bogotá that must decide if it maintains the sentence. You will have to do it before in October, month in which it prescribes the case.
The consequences of the decision are not only legal, but also political. For those who have supported the former president for decades, he now begins a campaign to argue that the ruling was political, and for his party, the Democratic Center, the great challenge of reinventing his journey to the legislative and presidential of next year, with his leader condemned by justice, opens. For the left, a natural enemy of the former right -wing president, the sentence can also represent an opportunity. The rumor in Bogotá is that the main victim of the process, Senator Cepeda, will launch himself as a presidential candidate, shed for being the man who laid Uribe to the bench of the accused.
But then there is a bigger question about what this conviction means to the history of Uribe, the most popular president in the country in recent decades, with a favorable opinion that always was around 70%. He became popular for his hard hand, returning the sense of security to millions of Colombians, but his government was also pointed out of serious human rights violations. Among the crimes that are attributed to him are the espionage to judges and members of the opposition and those, disguised as guerrillas killed in combat.
Uribe’s closeness with paramilitarism has always been a ghost in his political career and, as the judge said Monday, this ruling does not set the discussion. What does determine is that the former president sought to silence those witnesses who, like Monsalve, wanted to report that he and his family were very close to paramilitary groups. Uribe’s fight will probably reach the Supreme Court of Justice, the final instance. The road, which already exceeds 13 years, still lacks a journey.
