A Bogotá judge ruled this Monday that former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) is criminally responsible for the crime of witness bribery in criminal proceedings, in a case dating back to 2012.
Bogotá’s 44th Criminal Court Judge, Sandra Liliana Heredia Aranda, announced in a six-hour hearing that Uribe is guilty of the crime of witness bribery in criminal proceedings because, through his lawyer, Diego Cadena, he attempted to bribe, among others, former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve.
Heredia believes that the founder and honorary president of the conservative political party Centro Democrático offered benefits, through emissaries, to incarcerated individuals for his own benefit in several open cases. He also ruled that Uribe was guilty of manipulating witnesses to link Senator Iván Cepeda to illegal acts.
However, it remains to be seen whether he is guilty or innocent of the other crimes with which he was accused by the Prosecutor’s Office: procedural fraud and bribery, as well as a possible conviction.
The case began in 2012 when Uribe filed a complaint against Senator Iván Cepeda, claiming that the latter had toured the country’s prisons to present false testimony against him about the rise of paramilitarism in the Antioquia region.
However, after the evidence was presented, several versions indicated that the former president’s lawyers sought to manipulate witnesses to point the finger at Cepeda, so the latter went from accused to victim, unlike Uribe, the plaintiff, who became a suspect.
