By Luis Jaime Acosta BOGOTA (Reuters) -A Colombian court on Tuesday struck down former President Alvaro Uribe’s convictions for fraud and bribery, in a case over alleged witness-tampering that resulted in a 12-year house arrest sentence for the influential right-wing politician earlier this year. Uribe, who led Colombia’s executive from 2002 to 2010, was sentenced in early […]
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Colombian court strikes down former president’s convictions over witness tampering
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By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) -A Colombian court on Tuesday struck down former President Alvaro Uribe’s convictions for fraud and bribery, in a case over alleged witness-tampering that resulted in a 12-year house arrest sentence for the influential right-wing politician earlier this year.
Uribe, who led Colombia’s executive from 2002 to 2010, was sentenced in early August, making him Colombia’s first-ever former president to be criminally convicted.
The three-magistrate panel ruled in a decision read by Magistrate Manuel Antonio Merchan that the evidence cited by the judge who sentenced Uribe was not sufficiently strong or legally valid to merit the conviction.
It was not immediately clear whether those classed as victims in the case would appeal the new ruling, which would take the case up to Colombia’s highest court and extend the 13-year-long legal saga.
“Bogota’s Supreme Tribunal is repeating history, contradicting the Supreme Court of Justice and affirming that a judicial interception carried out by a magistrate of the Supreme Court against a criminal, where the voice of Uribe appears, is private,” current President Gustavo Petro said on X.
“That’s how you hide the history of paramilitary governance in Colombia,” added Petro, who first rose to prominence as a senator by exposing links between paramilitaries and politicians.
Uribe has always maintained his innocence, calling the case a political persecution. The tribunal in August suspended immediate enforcement of the house arrest until this appeal was decided.
The case against the former president revolves around allegations he ordered a lawyer to bribe jailed paramilitaries to discredit claims he had ties to their organizations.
The paramilitaries, funded by cattle ranchers, landowners and merchants to protect themselves from leftist guerrillas, are estimated by a truth commission to be responsible for nearly half of more than 450,000 people killed in Colombia’s conflict between 1985 and 2018.
Uribe in 2012 accused leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda of manipulating jailed ex-paramilitary members to link him to the groups, but the Supreme Court found no wrongdoing by Cepeda and turned the tables, saying it was Uribe who had pressured witnesses.
Shortly after the initial guilty verdict, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Uribe was a victim of the “weaponization” of Colombian judges, prompting Petro to call for respect for the independence of the judiciary.
Petro is feuding with the Trump administration, which has threatened tariffs against the South American nation over accusations of involvement in drug trafficking.
Trump earlier this year raised tariffs on Brazil over its conviction of political ally Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup.
The U.S. is Colombia’s top export destination.
Political campaigns will soon begin for next year’s presidential and legislative elections, in which several of Uribe’s allies will compete to succeed Petro, who cannot run again for president.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta and Julia Symmes Cobb; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Richard Chang)