Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has been sentenced to 12 years of home arrest following his conviction for witness-tampering and bribery, based on native media experiences.
The sentencing listening to on Friday additionally resulted in Uribe, 73, receiving a nice of $578,000 and a ban from serving in public workplace for 100 months and 20 days — or simply over eight years.
He’s now required to report back to authorities in Rionegro, in his dwelling province of Antioquia. Afterwards, Decide Sandra Liliana Heredia ordered him to “proceed instantly to his residence the place he’ll adjust to home arrest”.
With his conviction on July 28, Uribe has turn out to be the primary former Colombian president to be discovered responsible in a felony trial.
However Uribe’s defence attorneys have already introduced that they plan to enchantment.
The sentencing culminates a six-month trial and almost 13 years of authorized back-and-forth for the favored conservative chief, who is taken into account one of many defining forces in modern-day Colombian politics.
His home arrest additionally comes lower than a yr earlier than Colombia is about to carry presidential elections in Could 2026.
Allegations of human rights abuses
The case centres round Uribe’s function in Colombia’s greater than six-decade-long inner battle, which has seen authorities forces, right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing insurgent teams and drug-trafficking networks all combating for management over components of the nation.
Throughout his tenure as president from 2002 to 2010, Uribe led a strong-armed offensive in opposition to left-wing rebels just like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the biggest such group on the time.
However that strategy earned him criticism for alleged human rights abuses, which he has denied.
Underneath his presidency, the Colombian army confronted rising accusations that it was killing civilians to spice up the variety of enemy fighters it might report as lifeless.
This apply, often called the “false positives” scandal, has been implicated within the deaths of at the very least 2,000 individuals, with specialists indicating that the quantity could possibly be far larger. As many as 6,402 killings have been investigated.
Critics have additionally questioned Uribe’s ties to right-wing paramilitaries, one other allegation the ex-president has rejected.
However greater than a decade in the past, Uribe took motion to silence certainly one of his most outstanding critics, left-wing Senator Ivan Cepeda, sparking his present trial.
Cepeda and others had drawn connections between Uribe’s rise in politics within the Nineteen Nineties and the creation of the paramilitary group Bloque Metro.
A authorized boomerang
In 2012, Uribe filed a libel criticism in opposition to Cepeda with Colombia’s Supreme Court docket, after the senator launched a probe into the ex-president’s paramilitary contacts.
However in 2018, the case took a shocking new path: The Supreme Court docket dismissed the criticism in opposition to Cepeda, and the courtroom system as an alternative began to weigh prices in opposition to Uribe as an alternative.
Prosecutors accused Uribe of looking for to strain paramilitary witnesses to alter or suppress their testimony. Whereas Uribe has admitted to sending attorneys to satisfy former members of Colombia’s paramilitaries, he has denied taking unlawful actions.
Two paramilitaries have testified that Uribe’s lawyer, Diego Cadena, who additionally faces felony prices, provided them cash to provide beneficial proof.
Their witness statements have been additionally being utilized in a homicide trial that includes Uribe’s brother, Santiago Uribe.
Uribe’s conviction was introduced after a 10-hour listening to wherein Decide Heredia mentioned there was ample proof that the ex-president sought to alter witness testimony.
However that call has sparked backlash from america, the place the administration of President Donald Trump has proven a willingness to put political strain on international locations like Brazil that pursue felony instances in opposition to former right-wing leaders.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on social media in defence of Uribe, repeating prices of judicial bias which have turn out to be commonplace below Trump.
“Former Colombian President Uribe’s solely crime has been to tirelessly battle and defend his homeland,” Rubio mentioned. “The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial department by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent.”
However Democrats within the US accused Trump of looking for to subvert the rule of regulation abroad for political good points.
“The Trump Admin is saying that overseas leaders shouldn’t be topic to rule of regulation if they are saying good issues about Trump,” Consultant Jim McGovern wrote in reply to Rubio’s message.
“It is vitally incorrect to help impunity for a strongman held accountable by courts in his personal nation. This assertion is shameful, and it.”