Colombia: Court Ratifies Evidence Against Former President Uribe

Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice denied on Monday the annulment requests presented by the lawyers of former President Alvaro Uribe and of the Chamber's representative Hernan Prada in the proceeding that follows them for alleged bribery and procedural fraud.

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The magistrates of the Special Investigative Chamber of the Criminal Chamber of the Court "deny the request for the exclusion of evidence brought forth by the defense, as the practice of evidence was found to be legal," the Court's statement says.

Last year, the Court mistakenly intercepted Uribe's phone because his number appeared as if it were Nilton Cordoba's number - the representative of the Chamber- according to a letter in which that Court responds to an explanation requested by Uribe.

In such letter, the number of the former president, who is now a Colombian senator, appeared "repeatedly" in the processes that Cordoba has in that high court. When the Chamber representative warned that Uribe "did not present relevant information" in the parliamentarian's case, the interception was cancelled on Apr. 4.

However, the Court considered that the content of an interception made on Mar. 28 was "transcendent and relevant" to the case that the Supreme Court has opened against Uribe for alleged witnesses manipulation.

In this sense, the Court said that "as a result, as soon as this ruling is final, the examining magistrate will proceed to implement evidence and investigations ordered in the opening of the criminal investigation."

Uribe, who was Colombia's president between 2002 and 2010, is part of a process for an alleged manipulation of witnesses, which puts him against Ivan Cepeda, a senator from the leftist party Polo Democrático Alternativo.

Everything stems back to 2012 when Uribe denounced Cepeda for the alleged use of false witnesses, namely, imprisoned paramilitaries who were supposedly convinced to testify against the former president.

With these testimonies, Cepeda linked Uribe with paramilitary groups in Antioquia, a department at the northwest of the country.