Colombia
The ex-president Uribe declared guilty of witness subornation
Alvaro Uibe, president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010, was sentenced by the justice of his country on Monday.
Supporters of Alvaro Uibe carrying masks in his effigy, before the verdict of his trial before the Judicial Complex of Paloquemao in Bogota, on July 28, 2025.
AFP
A court declared on Monday the former Colombian president Alvaro Uibe guilty of the subornation of witness, making him the first former head of state condemned by the justice of the South American country.
The 73 -year -old politician, president from 2002 to 2010, was accused of having influenced witnesses in an investigation concerning him, and faced a sentence of 12 years in prison in this highly politicized case, less than a year from the presidential election.
In 2012, Alvaro Uibe accused the left senator Ivan Cepeda before the Supreme Court of having mined a conspiracy to falsely link it to paramilitary groups involved in the long Colombian armed conflict.
The court decided not to continue Ivan Cepeda and rather looked at the accusations targeting Alvaro Uibe, suspected of having tried to manipulate witnesses-of ex-combatants of imprisoned armed groups-to discredit his opponent. The former leader says he only wanted to convince them to tell the truth.
Bloody rivalry
The paramilitary groups appeared in the 1980s in Colombia to fight the Marxist guerrillas who had taken up arms against the state two decades earlier with the declared objective of fighting poverty and political marginalization, especially in rural areas.
In recent decades, a plethora of armed groups have adopted cocaine as the main source of income, fueling a bloody rivalry that continues in Colombia.
Alvaro Uibe remains a key figure in the political scene of his country and has a great influence on the Colombian right, in the opposition since the arrival of the country’s first leftist president in 2022, Gustavo Petro.
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