Trial proceedings in opposition to former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe started on Thursday, February 6, making Uribe the nation’s first ex-head of state to take the defendant’s chair in a Twenty first-century court docket.
The Colombian Prosecutors’ Workplace had formally charged Uribe, who served as Colombia’s president from 2002 to 2010, with bribery, procedural fraud, and witness tampering in Could 2024.
Though the previous president’s attorneys requested postponing the proceedings, arguing that preparatory hearings haven’t been formally closed, and Uribe himself claiming that he wanted time to make sure his security after receiving dying threats, decide Sandra Heredia dismissed the petition, as per newspaper El Colombiano.
“The statute of limitations is approaching, and it’s my behavior to supply fast responses to the victims,” Heredia noted on the trial.
In the course of the first session, the Prosecutor’s Workplace introduced its concept, which accuses Uribe of getting bribed imprisoned former paramilitaries to provide false testimonies in opposition to senator Iván Cepeda, one in every of Uribe’s political rivals.
According to El Colombiano, Uribe had denounced Cepeda earlier than Colombia’s Supreme Courtroom in 2012, after the senator hosted a debate about paramilitaries in Uribe’s residence state of Antioquia. On this, Cepeda acknowledged that Uribe, alongside together with his brother Santiago, had based the Metro Bloc of the United Self-Protection Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group categorised as a terrorist group by the US.
February 10 marked the second day of the proceedings, by which investigators known as Cepeda to testify.
The senator asserted that he interviewed former AUC paramilitary Pablo Hernán Sierra García whereas attending pedagogical actions in Bogotá prisons, as a part of his duties as a public servant. Sierra García, identified below the nom de guerre “Alberto Guerrero”, presumably advised Cepeda that the Uribe brothers have been among the many co-founders of the group’s Metro Bloc within the Nineteen Nineties.
The proceedings have been then suspended, and are to be resumed on Thursday, February 13. Upon Uribe’s exit from the courthouse Monday, nevertheless, civilians and public officers rallied to assist him, carrying banners and masks of his face.
“I assist President Uribe. Right now, Colombia wants what you characterize greater than ever: security, funding, and social cohesion,” claimed senator and presidential pre-candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay (unrelated), who attended the protest outdoors the courthouse.
“I intend to contribute to what will likely be demonstrated on this trial: that I didn’t bribe nor have witnesses bribed, that I didn’t deceive justice. We’ll show that this trial has a political origin, that our motive is to not discredit senator Cepeda,” Uribe stated through the trial.
Courtroom proceedings
After Uribe denounced Cepeda earlier than the Supreme Courtroom in 2012, claiming that the senator had abused his energy to go to inmates to strain them into issuing false declarations in opposition to him, the Courtroom appointed a sub-commission to analyze the allegations, as per the Colombian Interchurch Fee of Justice and Peace.
In February 2018, following six years of investigations that included wiretaps, the Courtroom announced that it could archive its inquiries into Cepeda and set up a brand new case in opposition to the previous president.
On this, the investigators asserted that it was the previous president who was bribing witnesses, inserting particular consideration on his calls to Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a former paramilitary who was, on the time, an inmate at a Bogotá jail.
“[A copy of this decision will be sent to] the Courtroom’s Secretariat… in order that it investigates the presumed participation of physician Álvaro Uribe Vélez in witness tampering actions,” the ruling read.
Uribe’s lawyer on the time, Diego Cadena, then presumably met with imprisoned former paramilitaries to bribe them into recanting testimonies that related Uribe with the AUC. As per Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, Cadena was subsequently charged with witness tampering and procedural fraud in a trial that’s nonetheless ongoing.
Uribe’s authorized group has sought to nullify the Courtroom’s investigations on his supposed ties to paramilitary teams a number of instances. First, in 2019 for the unlawful wiretapping of his telephone as related to a separate case, in 2023 for alleged lack of proof, after which once more in 2024 claiming a procedural error.
On August 4, 2020, the Courtroom issued a provisional home arrest warrant in opposition to Uribe, because the presumed instigator of witness bribery “who acted unequivocally with the intent to induce others to commit the act and/or reinforce their preexisting legal intent.”
This prompted Uribe’s resignation from the Senate, a place that he had held intermittently since 1986, and handed his case’s jurisdiction from the Supreme Courtroom to the Lawyer Normal’s workplace.
Additionally in 2020, the previous president’s youthful brother Santiago was acquitted for the crimes of conspiracy to commit a criminal offense and aggravated murder, for which he was below investigation since 1997. The costs have been allegedly related to the youthful Uribe’s involvement with a paramilitary group generally known as The 12 Apostles within the early Nineteen Nineties.
In early 2024, it was finally decided that the previous president’s trial would start on February 6, 2025.
Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Uribe Vélez was born in Medellín to a landowning household of cattle ranchers. He started his public service profession within the Medellín mayor’s workplace, earlier than being appointed as mayor himself in 1982 by then-president Belisario Betancur, according to the Colombian newspaper La Silla Vacía.
In 1983, his father was killed by the FARC guerrilla in an tried kidnapping on the outskirts of Medellín.
“The ache that now we have skilled could be very deep… My household is a sufferer, although now we have by no means declared ourselves as such,” Uribe stated earlier than the Colombian Fact Fee in 2021.
He was elected because the governor of Antioquia in 1994, a place which he leveraged to strengthen training and street infrastructure in his residence state, additionally constructing an iron-fist picture that prolonged nation-wide.
His presidential election in 2002 was historic, as he turned the primary Colombian president to win within the first voting spherical. This primary time period led to 2006 with approval scores above 70% because of the weakening of the FARC and ELN leftist guerrillas, together with the paramilitary demobilization course of he led.
After Congress and the Constitutional Courtroom approved presidential reelection in 2005, Uribe ran as soon as extra in 2006, winning the presidency once more on the primary spherical, with over 62% of the votes.
Following his electoral triumph, nevertheless, the Supreme Courtroom issued arrest warrants for congressmen- a few of whom have been allied with president Uribe- for alleged hyperlinks with paramilitary teams in what turned generally known as the “parapolitics” scandal.
Following his political rupture from ally Juan Manuel Santos, who had served as his Minister of Protection throughout Uribe’s second time period in workplace, he created a celebration in opposition to the Santos administration in 2014, the Democratic Heart.
In 2018, he turned the senator with probably the most votes in Colombian historical past on the time of the election, with over 800,000 votes, and the Democratic Heart rose as the most well-liked celebration with over 2.5 million votes.
That very same 12 months, U.S. diplomatic cables unsealed by way of a freedom of data request by Michael L. Evans on the Nationwide Safety Archive revealed {that a} Colombian senator advised diplomatic officers that Medellín Cartel founders had financed his senate marketing campaign when he was a senator within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties. The cables additionally revealed that U.S. officers believed Uribe had cartel ties whereas he was Director of Colombia’s Civil Aviation Administration within the early Nineteen Eighties.
As per newspaper El País, Uribe reworked the politics of Colombia as a pioneer of a “new proper” in Latin America.
“He’s the forerunner of the Colombian and world far-right, which was cornered [before Uribe]. Nobody ever dared to be so overtly far-right; that was now not a part of the institutional framework. It was solely after him that Trump and Bolsonaro emerged,” senator Clara López, a former pal and now political rival of Uribe’s, told El País.
Ongoing authorized battle
The third day of Uribe’s trial started on Tuesday, February 11, which might presumably hear the tip of Cepeda’s testimony.
The previous president’s authorized group, nevertheless, failed to look earlier than the court docket, saying that it was as an alternative filing a constitutional injunction (tutela) in opposition to decide Heredia for a supposed violation of the previous president’s rights to due course of and entry to justice.
“There are causes that point out that the impartiality of the decide presiding over this trial is significantly compromised,” lawyer Jaime Granados acknowledged.
“She has repeatedly disqualified the actions of the protection with adjectives and accusations that mirror a transparent bias in opposition to the protection and its arguments,” the lawyer added.
“We see this as an act of disloyalty to the due course of. It’s a option to impede and delay this essential trial, and we are going to use all of the mechanisms accessible to us to make sure that the classes earlier than this court docket can proceed usually,” senator Cepeda stated on Tuesday, after the trial was suspended, in dialog with information outlet Noticias Caracol.
The senator had beforehand requested worldwide oversight of the trial on Monday, naming the Interamerican Courtroom of Human Rights as one of many potential watchdogs which might assure the impartiality of the case.
The proceedings are set to renew on the morning of Thursday, February 13.
Featured Picture: Screenshot of reside broadcast of the February 10 listening to in opposition to former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez for the case of alleged witness tampering. Picture credit score: Radio Nacional de Colombia by way of YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc32oRgAlpg
