BOGOTA, Colombia — In a landmark case that has fascinated Colombia, former President Álvaro Uribe was sentenced to 12 years of house arrest on Friday due to charges of witness tampering and bribery, potentially impacting his reputation as a conservative powerhouse.
The ruling, which Uribe plans to challenge, came at the end of almost six months of legal proceedings. During this time, prosecutors laid out evidence suggesting he tried to manipulate witnesses linking him to a paramilitary faction during the 1990s.
“Politics prevailed over the law in sentencing,” Uribe said after Friday’s hearing.
Uribe, 73, has denied any wrongdoing. He faced up to 12 years in prison after being convicted Monday.
His legal team requested the court to let Uribe stay free amid the appeal process. However, Judge Sandra Heredia rejected this, citing concerns that the ex-president might easily flee the country to dodge his sentence.
Heredia also banned Uribe from holding public office for eight years and fined him about $776,000.
Before the sentencing, Uribe shared on X that he was gearing up to present arguments for his appeal. He noted the importance of focusing more on solutions than problems during personal hardships.
The appeals court will have until early October to issue a ruling, which either party could then challenge before Colombia’s Supreme Court.
Serving from 2002 to 2010 with backing from the United States, Uribe remains a divisive figure in Colombia. Some laud him for averting the country’s decline, while others link him to human rights abuses and the emergence of paramilitary forces in the 1990s.
On Monday, Judge Heredia asserted that there was substantial proof showing Uribe conspired with a lawyer to coax three imprisoned former paramilitaries to retract their statements, which were initially given to Ivan Cepeda, a leftist senator probing Uribe’s alleged ties to paramilitary groups.
Uribe in 2012 filed a libel suit against Cepeda in the Supreme Court. But in a twist, the high court in 2018 dismissed the accusations against Cepeda and began investigating Uribe.
Martha Peñuela Rosales, a supporter of Uribe’s party in the capital, Bogota, said she wept and prayed after hearing of the sentence. “It’s an unjust sentence. He deserves to be free,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sergio Andrés Parra, who protested against Uribe outside the courthouse, said the 12-year sentence “is enough” and, even if the former president appeals, “history has already condemned him.”
During Uribe’s presidency, Colombia’s military attained some of its biggest battlefield victories against Latin America’s oldest leftist insurgency, pushing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into remote pockets and forcing the group’s leadership into peace talks that led to the disarmament of more than 13,000 fighters in 2016.
