Paramilitarism, Drug Trafficking, and Death: Uribe’s True Record

By Misión Verdad  –  July 30, 2025

The recent verdict against Álvaro Uribe for procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings, after 475 days of trial and with the individualized sentence still pending, should not serve as a smokescreen. While the spotlight remains on the judicial novelty, a more serious background is fading: ties to paramilitaries, accusations of drug trafficking and the memory of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during his ruling.

On July 29, Judge Sandra Heredia found Uribe guilty of procedural fraud and witness bribery connected to the manipulation of statements in a case dating back to 2012. The defense maintains his innocence and may appeal. The individualized sentence is expected to be announced this Friday; based on his age and circumstances, house arrest is allowed.

But reducing “the Uribe case” to the conviction for witness tampering diminishes the picture. It ignores the victims or the power structure that shaped Colombia between 2002 and 2010, when alliances with paramilitaries were consolidated, incentives that led to extrajudicial killings—”false positives”—expanded, and the intelligence apparatus went on a rampage.

Paramilitarism: political project and territorial capture
The Ralito Pact (2001), an agreement to “refound the country” between leaders of the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and elite public officials, revealed the political nature of paramilitarism. This so-called parapolitics led to dozens of congressmen being investigated and convicted for collusion with the AUC; many belonged to forces that supported Uribe’s administration.

In the city, Operation Orion (Medellín, October 2002) epitomized the convergence of law enforcement and paramilitary structures. There were mass arrests and disappearances; later, the Oficina de Envigado and its allies—a mafia network born as a collection arm of the Medellín cartel that, after the fall of Pablo Escobar, reconfigured to coordinate neighborhood gangs and regulate illegal economies in the Aburrá Valley—consolidated social control of the territory.

Uribe denies alliances with paramilitaries and has not been convicted of that crime; however, sentences and court testimony from former AUC leaders reveal patterns of regional co-optation. What is relevant today is to emphasize that those events were part of a project with structural effects that shaped the architecture of power and the political economy in large regions of the country.

Drug trafficking: how the criminal connection works
To understand the Uribe regime’s trajectory, it must be placed within the real ecosystem that governs war and regional politics: drug trafficking is the financial engine that connects armed groups, local authorities, and power structures. In this light, existing documentation records operational links and shared benefits between drug networks and the political project led by Álvaro Uribe.

On the documentary front, in 2020, the National Security Archive published a dossier of declassified official US records that, since the 1990s, point to Álvaro Uribe’s ties to paramilitaries and drug trafficking. A 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report placed him among the “top drug traffickers” and close to Pablo Escobar; a 2004 Pentagon memo warned Donald Rumsfeld that Uribe “almost certainly” had dealings with the AUC when he was governor; and diplomatic cables from 1992–1997 recorded contributions attributed to the Ochoas, contacts with Escobar’s entourage and the “web” between the governor, Convivir, ranchers, and the AUC—that is, a narco-paramilitary and local elite network.

At the institutional level, the Truth Commission describes, through extensive testimony and documents, how during Álvaro Uribe’s administration (1995–1997), the expansion of the Convivir groups in Antioquia was intertwined with paramilitary structures financed by drug trafficking, which operated under legal cover and with departmental political validation. The report situates this narco-influence as a structural feature of the territorial control apparatus of the time and compares it with judicialized testimony and declassified official records that document how this network operated.

In court, paramilitary leaders such as Salvatore Mancuso and Ever Veloza (“HH”) have testified under oath regarding networks, local pacts, territorial protection, and coordination with authorities to consolidate paramilitary control in regions such as Antioquia, Córdoba, and the Caribbean Coast. In these confessions, they directly mention Álvaro Uribe in the context of political-territorial relations that facilitated this armed dominance, although drug trafficking economies fueled many of these operations.

War crimes and crimes against humanity: “false positives”
Between 2002 and 2008, under the Uribe ruling, the Colombian Army systematically executed thousands of innocent civilians, passing them off as guerrillas killed in combat. According to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), these unlawful executions, known as “false positives,” left at least 6,402 victims, with Antioquia accounting for a quarter of the cases. The peaks occurred between 2006 and 2008, when military units faced the greatest pressure to show “results” under the Democratic Security policy.

The court records reveal a recurring pattern: death quotas; incentives such as promotions or vacations; recruiting unemployed youth with false job offers; transporting them to conflict zones; summary executions; manipulating the scene; planting weapons; and subsequently presenting them to the press as combat casualties. The JEP concluded that these crimes were part of an institutional policy promoted by senior military commanders and rewarded by civilian authorities.

Among the statements brought before the court in truth and reparation proceedings, retired Major General Henry Torres admitted before the JEP that he acted on orders from General Mario Montoya and under direct pressure from President Uribe. This is compounded by testimony of a senior DAS official in Casanare, who stated that institutional intelligence policy “depended on and followed direct orders from the president of the Republic.”

Colombia’s Courts Finds Álvaro Uribe Guilty After 13-Year Judicial Process

Uribe’s own words reinforce this line of responsibility. At a community council held in 2007 in Aracataca, he said bluntly: “General Padilla, criticize whatever you criticize, but under my political responsibility, put an end to what remains of the FARC.”

Beyond the verdict
The conviction for procedural fraud and bribery may set a precedent, but it falls far short of reflecting the magnitude of the damage Álvaro Uribe represents as a political figure. His career has been linked to a model of power sustained by assassinations, extrajudicial executions, alliances with paramilitaries, and state structures permeated by drug trafficking economies. This machinery not only shaped an architecture of violence in Colombia but also projected its effects to other countries, including Venezuela, where he has operated as a promoter of destabilization strategies.

From this side of the border, the key is to keep in mind that his legacy—far from over—is a criminal, violent, and transnational project that remains a threat to Colombia and the region.

 

 

 

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/JRE/SL