BOGOTA, Colombia — Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was sentenced Friday to 12 years of home arrest for witness tampering and bribery in a historic case that gripped the South American nation and tarnished the conservative strongman’s legacy.
The sentence, which Uribe stated will likely be appealed, adopted a virtually six-month trial through which prosecutors offered proof that he tried to affect witnesses who accused the law-and-order chief of getting hyperlinks to a paramilitary group within the Nineties.
“Politics prevailed over the regulation in sentencing,” Uribe stated after Friday’s listening to.
Uribe, 73, has denied any wrongdoing. He confronted as much as 12 years in jail after being convicted Monday.
His legal professional had requested the court docket to permit Uribe to stay free whereas he appeals the decision. Decide Sandra Heredia on Friday stated she didn’t grant the protection’s request as a result of it could be “simple” for the previous president to go away the nation to “evade the imposed sanction.”
Heredia additionally banned Uribe from holding public workplace for eight years and fined him about $776,000.
Forward of Friday’s sentencing, Uribe posted on X that he was making ready arguments to assist his enchantment. He added that one should “suppose rather more concerning the answer than the issue” throughout private crises.
The appeals court docket could have till early October to problem a ruling, which both occasion may then problem earlier than Colombia’s Supreme Court docket.
The previous president ruled from 2002 to 2010 with sturdy assist from america. He’s a polarizing determine in Colombia, the place many credit score him for saving the nation from changing into a failed state, whereas others affiliate him with human rights violations and the rise of paramilitary teams within the Nineties.
Heredia on Monday stated she had seen sufficient proof to find out that Uribe conspired with a lawyer to coax three former paramilitary group members, who have been in jail, into altering testimony that they had offered to Ivan Cepeda, a leftist senator who had launched an investigation into Uribe’s alleged ties to a paramilitary group.
Uribe in 2012 filed a libel go well with in opposition to Cepeda within the Supreme Court docket. However in a twist, the excessive court docket in 2018 dismissed the accusations in opposition to Cepeda and started investigating Uribe.
Martha Peñuela Rosales, a supporter of Uribe’s occasion within the capital, Bogota, stated she wept and prayed after listening to of the sentence. “It’s an unjust sentence. He deserves to be free,” she stated.
In the meantime, Sergio Andrés Parra, who protested in opposition to Uribe outdoors the courthouse, stated the 12-year sentence “is sufficient” and, even when the previous president appeals, “historical past has already condemned him.”
Throughout Uribe’s presidency, Colombia’s army attained a few of its largest battlefield victories in opposition to Latin America’s oldest leftist insurgency, pushing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into distant pockets and forcing the group’s management into peace talks that led to the disarmament of greater than 13,000 fighters in 2016.
