With a video published with the brief title 'Call for trial', former President Álvaro Uribe responded, through his social networks, to the Prosecutor's Office's decision to call him to trial for procedural fraud and bribery of witnesses. For just over 21 minutes, who was the ruler of Colombians between 2002 and 2010, made a chronological review of the process against him and reiterated his defense arguments. Uribe considers that the decision of the judicial body – which for a month has been chaired by a new prosecutor, Luz Adriana Camargo – is due to political motivations and has been promoted by people who have “animosity” towards him.
The former president's first argument is that two previous prosecutors, with whom he says he has not had any relationship throughout his life, and “both with long judicial careers”, did not find merit to accuse him for the case known as 'the false witnesses'. . In fact, in the last administrations, headed by Néstor Humberto Martínez and then Francisco Barbosa, the judicial entity requested on multiple occasions that the case be closed, or precluded, because it considered that there was not enough evidence. However, none of the circuit judges to whom the request was made decided to close the legal case: they did see enough evidence to continue.
“This trial was carried out due to political presumptions, personal animosities, political revenge, without evidence that would allow us to infer that I was seeking to bribe witnesses or deceive justice,” says Uribe. The former president's case is today in the hands of the Prosecutor's Office, but the one who first opened it, in 2018, was the Supreme Court. That is why Uribe, in the video, attacks the very origin of the process. He mentions judges José Luis Barceló, Luis Antonio Hernández and Fernando Castro Caballero, and alleges that they denied his lawyers the existence of the process, did not allow him to give a free version and aired details of the process in the media.
“The three magistrates who carried out the process against me participated in the election of the magistrates who imprisoned me,” maintains the former president. In 2020, the Court requested preventive detention for Uribe. That year, he decided to resign from the Senate and his legal process passed into the hands of the Prosecutor's Office, which was headed by Francisco Barbosa, who was close to the then president Iván Duque, closer to Uribism.
But prosecutor Barbosa eventually had to leave. Uribe also points out that Judge Hernández “was a promoter of the election of the new prosecutor,” Luz Adriana Camargo, who took office a month ago and is now calling the former president to trial. It is the justices of the Supreme Court who by law always choose the prosecutor from a shortlist of candidates presented by the president.
Uribe questions the new prosecutor for having worked alongside the current Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, in the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala. Velásquez was an auxiliary magistrate of the Supreme Court two decades ago and is remembered for his investigations into parapolitics, as alliances between paramilitaries and politicians are known, several of them from Uribismo. Mario Uribe, former senator and cousin of the former president, was one of those convicted of these links. “The minister's animosity towards my family and me is a secret to no one,” adds the former president.
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A decade of mutual accusations
The case of false witnesses dates back ten years, and over time it has become a convoluted issue, in which names of lawyers, former paramilitaries, extraditions, visits to prisons and accusations of bribery come to light. It begins in 2014, when Senator Iván Cepeda summons a debate on the emergence of paramilitarism in Antioquia in the nineties; In it, he accuses the former president of having maintained ties with these groups.
Throughout his career, Uribe has dedicated great efforts to defending himself against these accusations. He reacted by denouncing Cepeda before the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attorney General's Office; He accused him of making tours of the prisons to obtain and organize false testimonies against him. But throughout the process, versions appeared that suggested that, on the contrary, it was Diego Cadena, one of the former president's lawyers, who sought to manipulate witnesses by offering money to splash the leftist representative. Uribe is emphatic in defending his innocence: “There is not a single piece of evidence that can be invoked to indicate that the initiative was mine, directly or indirectly, through Dr. Cadena.” And he adds: “I never initiated, conceived, or ordered to offer benefits to prisoners, much less so that they would remain silent or lie.”
In the video published this Wednesday, the issue of visits to prisons where former paramilitary leaders were detained comes to light. The former president claims that Cepeda and the late politician Piedad Córdoba met with former commanders in a United States prison to seek to collect evidence against him and his brother, Santiago Uribe, and says that in exchange they were offered judicial benefits. He cites information that he says he received from his former Minister of Agriculture, Andrés Felipe Arias, imprisoned for a corruption case known as Agro Ingreso Seguro.
Uribe maintains that, according to information provided by Arias, in the prison where he was being held, they told him that the case against his brother Santiago “was revenge for the extradition.” The opposition – today in the Government -, on the other hand, has maintained the theory that the extraditions of former paramilitaries during the Uribe government were due to an effort by him to silence such links. The recent return of former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso to Colombia has refocused attention on this issue.
The former president has said on repeated occasions that he does not know Mancuso, and takes advantage of this video to clarify that he has not seen Juan Carlos Sierra, alias the tuso, who has stated that his extradition in 2008 was a move to keep him from revealing connections between the paramilitaries, the Military Forces and the Colombian elite. Uribe, in his speech, points to another theory: “This manipulation against me shows signs of being part of the motivation for a total peace agreement or for a full stop law. So, let them forgive the criminals, as they did with the FARC, and justify it with the fiction of forgiving those of us who have not committed crimes. With all this, the arrival of Mancuso, whom I extradited, coincides.” Both Mancuso and the FARC, lately and in different scenarios, have spoken of a possible tribunal to close the conflict.
“After the two failed requests for preclusion, all the new evidence carried out favors me. However, they dismissed them,” says Uribe, and concludes: “They accuse me. They open the doors of prison to me without proof, with evidence to the contrary, due to assumptions, political moods and the need to equate those who have not committed a crime with those who have done so.”
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