The former president Colombian Álvaro Uribe was sentenced this Friday to 12 years in prison for the crimes of procedural and bribery fraud.
The penalty must be served in house prison, according to the judgment of Judge Sandra Heredia, of the 44th Criminal Court of the Bogotá Circuit.
This conviction is the most recent decision in a long deeply polarized process of almost 13 years. His supporters and Uribe himself claim that the ex -president is the victim of a political persecution and his detractors ask for justice for the burdens against him.
The sentence, which Uribe affirmed will be appealed, took place after a trial of almost six months in which the Prosecutor’s Office presented evidence that the former president tried to influence the witnesses who accused him of links with a paramilitary group in the 1990s.
Uribe, 73, has denied any crime or irregularity, while his lawyer asked the court to allow him to remain free while appealing the verdict.
Judge Heredia, with whom the politician had a discussion in the court, also disabled him to exercise public office for eight years.
According to The agency EFEUribe will fulfill its house prison on a farm located in the municipality of Rionegro, in the northwest of Colombia, which has an artificial lake, stables that house specimens of fine passage and wide spaces for recreation.
It is a property that the founder and leader of the Democratic Center party frequently occupies with his wife, Lina Moreno, where he usually receives allies and visitors, and from where most of the trial hearings followed in which he was convicted.
A farm with lake and fine passing horses: the place where Colombian president Álvaro Uribe will pay his sentence.https://t.co/hanlj839xr
– Efe News (@Efenoticias) August 2, 2025
Reactions to the condemnation
The conviction has unleashed various reactions inside and outside Colombia, where the process against it has been considered “the trial of the century.”
The Democratic and relative center of the former president expressed his opposition to the judge’s opinion and summoned a march on August 7 in the back of the politician. The call calls Uribe’s supporters to mobilize “in every corner of the country.”
For their part, leaders of the Historical Pact and other figures of the Colombian left held the conviction. In his criteria, it is a milestone in the judicial history of the country, which launches a forceful message that “no one is above the law,” review EFE.
Meanwhile, the Colombian senator Iván Cepeda, who was one of the victims in the Uribe trial, said the former president has undertaken a “fierce persecution” against justice.
“The today convicted in the first instance, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, has proceeded to unleash the fiercest persecution against the Judiciary every time a judge, a prosecutor, a magistrate, a lawyer or a victim has dared to ask that his numerous criminal actions be clarified,” said Cepeda after knowing the sentence.
In contrast, the Colombian College of Jurists expressed his “concern for the scope and effects” of the sentence of first instance against Uribe and estimated that the ruling “raises serious questions of constitutional relevance about the observance of essential judicial guarantees.”
