Álvaro Uribe suffered a severe setback. After five months of analyzing his case, the Superior Court of Bogotá decided to reject the Prosecutor’s Office’s request to archive him due to lack of evidence to determine his guilt and he will have to go to trial.
It will be the first time, therefore, that a former president sits in the dock. Not even Ernesto Samper, who arrived at the Nariño Palace thanks to money from the Cali cartel, should have confronted justice. Now the leader of the Democratic Center will do it alleged witness tampering and procedural fraud.
The ruling unleashed a political storm between those who defend Uribe and his detractors. “Álvaro Uribe has fought for our country all his life. It is regrettable that a preclusion requested by the Prosecutor’s Office has not proceeded, after an exhaustive investigation process where his innocence has stood out,” former President Iván wrote on his X account. Duke.
“Alvaro Uribe has finally been called to trial! Unfortunately, the same Prosecutor’s Office that already tried to close the process against him will be the one that will have to present the accusation against him. That is why the right wants to keep a puppet prosecutor,” he noted on social networks. the congressman of the Historical Pact, Alfredo Mondragón, a few words that summarize the feelings of the critics of who was a popular Head of State, between 2002 and 2008, who won his two elections, in the first round, by an absolute majority.
But the process in question dates back several years, when Uribe was no longer president and sued senators Iván Cepeda and Piedad Córdoba for seeking testimony against him among former paramilitary prisoners, in exchange for getting them benefits. To general surprise, everything took a turn when Uribe went from plaintiff to accused by the aforementioned senator of bribing inmates to testify in his favor. He would have done it through one of his lawyers, Diego Cadena, something that the former president and his defender have always denied.