Former Colombian President Uribe denies bribery and witness tampering charges in historic trial
By ASTRID SUAREZ and MANUEL RUEDA
Updated 6:01 PM CST, February 10, 2025
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday denied charges of bribery and witness tampering as he made his opening statement in the first criminal trial of a former president in the country’s history.
Speaking to a judge in the capital, Bogota, Uribe said that he would prove that the charges against him “are politically motivated.”
The charges stem from allegations that Uribe attempted to influence witnesses in a case brought against him by leftist senator Iván Cepeda, who accused the conservative leader of having links to a paramilitary group founded by ranchers in the 1990s to fight rebel groups.
The case dates back to 2012, when Uribe filed a libel suit against Cepeda with the Supreme Court, the entity charged with investigating elected officials. But in a surprising turn of events, the court dismissed charges against Cepeda and launched an investigation against Uribe in 2018.
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The more accurate term used to name these "paramilitary groups" has always been "death squads." The Colombian death squads have worn uniforms like the Colombian soldiers' uniforms, only without official markers to identify
them. They have occassionally worked in tandem with Colombian units during massacres of villages, and have been described in court of grotesque acts of terrorism like as mutilating, beheading, disemboweling targets they suspect of being leftist rebels, even stuffing large stones into their opened stomachs to sink them before throwing them into rivers. They also have commonly invaded voting centers and instructed would-be voters to vote for "the one with the glasses" when Uribe was in power.
Álvaro Uribe was given the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush.