Former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, formally accused of bribery charges in court. Photo: AP/Iván Valencia.
The Colombian Attorney General’s Office has formally charged former President Álvaro Uribe with bribery of witnesses, procedural fraud, and bribery in criminal proceedings. This makes Uribe not only the first president in the country’s history to be brought to criminal trial but also the first president to be charged in a court of law.
On Friday, May 24, the judge of the 44th Criminal Court of Bogotá, Sandra Liliana Heredia, admitted the charges brought by the Attorney General’s Office against Uribe, who was president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010.
“In accordance with article 343 of Law 906 of 2004, it is established that, in the first numeral, the corrections, additions, and clarifications presented by the Attorney General’s Office are duly incorporated,” ruled Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia during the indictment hearing. “Furthermore, the indictment has been filed against Mr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who, as of this moment, acquires the status of defendant.”
🇨🇴 | URGENTE: Álvaro Uribe es acusado de tres hechos de soborno y dos de fraude procesal y se convierte en el primer expresidente en ir a juicio penal en Colombia. pic.twitter.com/l6BXWKGcH8
— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) May 24, 2024
Attorney Gilberto Villarreal, representing the Attorney General’s Office, classified Uribe as “a perpetrator of the successive concurrence of three crimes of bribery in criminal proceedings.” He also accredited the ex-president with “successive concurrence of two counts of procedural fraud” and as “perpetrator of the crime of bribery of witnesses, by giving money to a witness for him to lie in his favor.”
Judge Heredia denied Uribe’s petition for nullity of the process, considering the petition “absolutely improper” and, therefore, “flatly rejected, a decision against which no appeal can proceed.” Thus, if found guilty, the leader of the right-wing Democratic Center party may be sentenced to between six and 12 years in prison.
The judge also accepted as victims in the case leftist Senator Iván Cepeda Castro, former Attorneys Jorge Perdomo and Eduardo Montealegre, and Deyanira Gómez, the ex-wife of former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, who was involved in the case.
This dispute dates back to 2012 when Senator Iván Cepeda Castro held a Congressional debate on paramilitary violence in the northern department of Antioquia. He presented testimonies pointing to former President Uribe and his brother Santiago Uribe as founders of the Metro Bloc of the paramilitary gang United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
In response, Álvaro Uribe, a senator at the time, sued Cepeda before the Supreme Court of Justice for alleged bribery of witnesses. In 2018, the court ruled that the senator was not guilty and closed the investigation. Instead, the court ordered an investigation against Uribe for the same crime of bribing witnesses.
According to the investigation, former President Uribe’s lawyer, Diego Cadena, and former Congressman Álvaro Hernán Prada scheduled prison visits to meet with Carlos Enrique Vélez and former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, incarcerated respectively in Palmira and La Picota prisons in Bogotá.
During these visits, Monsalve was allegedly asked to change his version and claim that he had been manipulated by Cepeda to testify against Uribe. Monsalve admitted to the court that a whole strategy was built to incriminate Cepeda.
For years, Uribe has insisted that this is a politically motivated case against him and that there is no evidence. On two occasions, he requested the preclusion of the case, which was denied by various courts. Attorney Villarreal took over the case and confirmed that, based on the evidence and probative elements, there are sufficient grounds to indict Uribe.
(Telesur) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SF
