The decision of Sandra Heredia, the 44th criminal judge of Bogotá, will go down in history. It has been decades since a former president of Colombia has attended a criminal trial from the dock; the most recent will be Álvaro Uribe Vélez. After a two-day judicial hearing – it began on May 17 and resumed this Friday – in which she heard the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office and the defense, the judicial official found that there are sufficient reasons for the most popular and powerful politician to of the country in the last two decades, the one who managed to reform the Constitution to his benefit to accumulate two four-year terms in Government (2002-2010), be tried for the crimes of bribery, procedural fraud and bribery of witnesses in criminal proceedings. Although the former president’s defense lawyers asked the judge to declare the nullity of the process, which has been in the ordinary jurisdiction for nearly four years after Uribe renounced his senatorial privilege in 2020, the arguments of prosecutor Gilberto Villarreal, the first, prevailed. of five prosecutors who decide to make a formal accusation. Although the trial can last months or even years, its beginning shows how much a leader’s fortunes can change.
The genesis of the process dates back to February 2018, when the Supreme Court of Justice filed a criminal complaint filed four years ago by Uribe, who at that time was the leading congressman of the Democratic Center party, against Iván Cepeda, senator of the leftist Polo Democratic Alternative. According to the former president, Cepeda had tried to manipulate witnesses to show his alleged relationship with paramilitary groups. The Court’s magistrates, after evaluating the evidence, concluded that there was no support for said incrimination and that, on the contrary, there were reasons to believe that the complainant was the one who had committed crimes. Through his lawyer Diego Cadena, the magistrates said, Uribe had offered gifts to former paramilitaries so that they would accuse Cepeda of distorting his testimonies.
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