Colombian President Gustavo Petro has expressed his surprise at the Bogotá Superior Court’s ruling ordering the immediate release of former President Álvaro Uribe, who had been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest for procedural fraud and witness bribery.
“I don’t understand how he’s free,” he said during the last cabinet meeting. “Is that justice?” he asked, comparing this case to that of the well-known celebrity Daneidy Barrera, alias “Epa Colombia,” convicted for a series of acts of vandalism against a bus station during the 2019 protests.
Petro also took the opportunity to criticize Uribe for trying to accuse him of instigating the attack on Senator Miguel Uribe, who recently died after failing to recover from the gunshot wounds he received two months ago, and stated that the former president has “blood on his hands.”
“Uribe’s criticism of Petro is absolutely fallacious,” the president said, reminding Uribe of his relationship with the paramilitaries. “Now he’s blaming us for his mistake. Justice will see what it does with him. I have no hatred or revenge in my heart, even though he hurt me and my family,” he expressed.
Likewise, Petro has criticized the former Colombian president’s management and security measures during his years in Casa Nariño, which he has described as a “policy of revenge, based on death,” according to RCN.
This Tuesday, the Colombian Supreme Court ordered Uribe’s release while the appeal filed by the former president’s defense proceeds. It also deemed the arguments Judge Sandra Heredia used to order his immediate detention “vague, indeterminate, and imprecise.”
Heredia considered it proven that Uribe had instigated and pressured several prisoners linked to paramilitaries to favor him in a case against Senator Iván Cepeda in exchange for prison benefits, dating back to 2012.
Uribe accused Senator Iván Cepeda of having toured the country’s prisons to present false testimony about his involvement in the rise of paramilitaries in Antioquia. However, everything changed when new evidence emerged indicating that the former president had attempted to manipulate witnesses to keep this matter from being revealed, thus transforming him from a plaintiff into a suspect.
