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News > Colombia

Colombian Attorney General Attempts to End Case Against Uribe

  • Archival image of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe during a visit to Paraguay in 2014. Uribe Vélez is currently being investigated for alleged procedural fraud and witness tampering while he was a senator.

    Archival image of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe during a visit to Paraguay in 2014. Uribe Vélez is currently being investigated for alleged procedural fraud and witness tampering while he was a senator. | Photo: EFE/Andrés Cristaldo

Published 5 March 2021
Opinion

The Attorney General's Office will request that the criminal proceedings against former senator Alvaro Uribe be terminated before a trial is held.

The Colombian Attorney General's Office announced this Friday that it will request to preclude (end) the investigation against former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez for alleged procedural fraud and witness tampering while he was a senator, amid criticism from various sectors about what they consider a new attempt to exonerate him from justice.

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Through a press release, the Attorney General's Office announced that the coordinator for the Delegate Prosecutor's Office before the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), Gabriel Jaimes Durán, will request that the criminal proceeding be terminated before a trial is held.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, after examining the evidence, Jaimes Durán established that several of the conducts to which Uribe Vélez was linked "do not have the characteristics of a crime, and others that do, cannot be attributed to him as author or participant."

Jaimes Durán's conclusions to request the preclusion must be presented before a judge of the Bogotá Circuit on a date yet to be determined.

Local media report that this step is important, since Jaimes Durán's thesis is opposed to that of the Court which, at the time, found that there was sufficient evidence and even ordered the arrest of Uribe Vélez.

In the last hours it was also known that Senator Iván Cepeda will sue Jaimes Durán for prevarication. In a virtual press conference, the representative of the Alternative Democratic Pole announced that the complaint will be filed in the next few days and will also be signed, as a victim, by former Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre.


Background of the case
 

The former Colombian president (2002-2012) was under investigation since 2018 by the CSJ in a case of alleged manipulation of ex-paramilitary witnesses (Carlos Enrique Vélez and Juan Guillermo Monsalve) while he was a senator.

According to the Court, Uribe Vélez would have bribed those witnesses, who are in prison and had already testified against him, so that they would not point him out as the founder of the Northern Block of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, in the department of Antioquia, an irregular armed group dedicated to multiple illegal activities.

These payments were an attempt to make the witnesses modify their testimony and declare that Senator Iván Cepeda, in exchange for benefits, had instigated them to lie in order to harm Uribe Vélez politically.

Uribe Vélez's lawyer, Diego Cadena, admitted that he had transferred the bribes, presented as "humanitarian aid".

In August 2020, while serving a house arrest order from the CSJ, Uribe Velez resigned his seat in Congress to ensure that the case was dropped by the Court and taken over by the Attorney General's Office.

Not only did the latter happen, but the Public Prosecutor's Office set aside the investigation being carried out by the Court and initiated its own.

At that time, various social sectors warned that there was a risk that Uribe Vélez would be exonerated, since the Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, is a close friend of President Iván Duque, his political protégé.

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