The ruling also disqualified him from holding public office or exercising political rights for more than eight years.

On Friday, Judge Sandra Heredia of Bogota’s 44th Criminal Court sentenced former President Alvaro Uribe to 12 years of house arrest for the crimes of procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings.

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The court ruling also imposed a fine of approximately US$822,000 on the far-right politician and disqualified him from holding public office or exercising political rights for more than eight years.

Heredia tasked the Judicial Services Center in Rionegro — the municipality in the Antioquia department where Uribe resides — with issuing the incarceration warrant and “proceeding with his immediate transfer to his residence, where he will serve his house arrest and undergo the respective monitoring.”

On Monday, Uribe became the first former Colombian president to be criminally convicted. His defense attorneys, however, announced they will appeal the decision before the Bogota Superior Court.

During the sentencing hearing, Heredia had indicated that Colombian law stipulates a sentence “greater than four years and less than eight” for the crimes of procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings.

However, the prosecutor Marlene Orjuela requested a harsher sentence of nine years and a fine of about US$349,000. The final sentence exceeded both the judge’s initial range and the prosecutor’s request, causing widespread surprise across the country.

The text reads, “Condemned to 12 years, Alvaro Uribe Velez, Colombia’s symbol of political power and impunity, today faces a reality: justice reached him. Finally, the truth begins to break through so much lie, assembly, and fear.”

Twelve Years

The sentence, spanning more than 1,100 pages, imposes 91 months of imprisonment for bribery in criminal proceedings, plus 29 months due to ‘Homogeneous Contest’ — a legal term used when multiple individuals are involved in the same criminal conduct — bringing the total to 10 years.

“This conduct was committed as part of ‘Homogeneous Contest’, involving three witnesses who were proven to have been bribed through intermediaries — namely Juan Monsalve, Carlos Velez, and Euridice Cortes. “As a result, the penalty for the two remaining offenses is increased by 29 months, for a total of 120 months of imprisonment,” the sentence states.

For the crime of procedural fraud, Heredia imposed a sentence of 104 months. However, she designated bribery in criminal proceedings as the base crime and added two more years due to the fraud conviction.

“The most serious offense was determined to be bribery in criminal proceedings, which will serve as the base offense. On that basis, we are adding two years due to the procedural fraud charge. Therefore, the final sentence is set at 144 months in prison, or 12 years,” the ruling reads.

The Conviction and Its Impact

In Monday’s hearing — which drew national attention for more than 10 hours — the judge Heredia concluded that the evidence presented by prosecutors was strong enough to deliver “a conviction for the punishable conduct of bribery in criminal proceedings, committed in Homogeneous Contest on three occasions and in Homogenous Contest with procedural fraud.”

In addition to the two crimes for which he was convicted, Uribe — whom Heredia described as “the most powerful man in the country” — was acquitted of a third charge: simple bribery.

The case stems from a legal complaint Uribe himself filed in 2012 with the Supreme Court of Justice, accusing leftist congressman Ivan Cepeda of witness tampering. At the time, Cepeda was preparing a report on Uribe’s alleged ties to paramilitary groups.

However, Magistrate Jose Luis Barcelo, who received the complaint, decided not to investigate Cepeda. Instead, he opened an investigation into Uribe for tampering with witnesses to prevent them from testifying against him.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

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