Former Colombian President Uribe found guilty of bribery
The right-wing politician was accused of pressuring and paying imprisoned paramilitaries to change testimony that smeared him
A Colombian judge found former President Alvaro Uribe guilty of witness tampering on Monday, in a trial that made him the first former head of state to face criminal proceedings in the South American country's history.
The A 73-year-old right-wing politician who governed between 2002 and 2010, was accused of pressing and paying imprisoned paramilitaries to change testimonies that smeared him.
"The first bribe in a criminal proceeding in terms of the materiality of the punishable conduct has been proven," declared the 44th Criminal Circuit Judge of Bogotá, Sandra Heredia. He added that the former president also committed procedural fraud and faces up to 12 years in prison.
Outside the court, supporters of the former president wore masks with his face and shouted "Uribe is innocent," while opponents demanded a prison sentence against him.
Thirteen-Year Trial
The lengthy judicial process began in 2012, when Uribe sued leftist congressman Iván Cepeda before the Supreme Court of Justice for seeking prisoners to accuse him of having ties to the far-right paramilitaries who fought the guerrillas.
In an unexpected turn of events, in 2018 the court changed the course of the investigation when they suspected that it was Uribe, then a congressman, who tried to bribe them to change their stories.
After multiple judicial maneuvers, Uribe resigned from the Senate in 2020, lost his immunity, and the case was transferred to the ordinary courts.
The guilty plea from the most influential Colombian politician of the century, very popular for his hard line against the guerrillas, deals a severe blow to the conservative right ahead of the 2026 presidential elections.
The party he leads, the Democratic Center, is the main opposition movement to leftist President Gustavo Petro.
The former president maintains his innocence and stated that he was a trial politician motivated by a desire for "revenge" from the left, the extinct FARC guerrilla group, and former president Juan Manuel Santos, signatory of the agreement that disarmed the rebels in 2017.