After a long day of hearing this Wednesday, the criminal circuit judge in Bogotá is reading his decision on whether or not to preclude the investigation against former President Uribe in Colombia.
Colombia News.
A judge in Bogotá defines this Wednesday, April 27, whether or not the criminal investigation against former President Uribe Vélez continues, this for the case of alleged witness tampering in the midst of a counterclaim for alleged relationship with paramilitarism.
The hearing has been virtual.
The 28th Criminal Judge of the Circuit with Knowledge Function in Bogotá, has been blunt and has asked for clarity in the explanation and exposition of the evidence. She has tried to maintain order throughout the hearing.
The Prosecutor’s Office, which had requested the estoppel in March 2021, presented evidence this Wednesday so that the investigation for the crimes of bribery of a witness in criminal proceedings and procedural fraud does not continue.
This is a case that comes from the year 2012.
Former President Uribe sued Senator Iván Cepeda, telling him to go look for witnesses to accuse him of being a paramilitary, but later, the senator countersued and said that Uribe manipulated witnesses to testify against him.
That’s how the fight went.
This Wednesday’s decision is the one that the Supreme Court of Justice began in 2018 when it opened an investigation against former senator Uribe, to determine if he had tried to manipulate witnesses against Cepeda.
That case went from the Court to the Prosecutor’s Office when Álvaro Uribe Vélez resigned his seat in the Senate, in August 2020.
At that time, he managed to spend several weeks in jail at home, when the Court ordered an insurance measure against him for the investigation that was being carried out for allegedly trying to modify the testimony of former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve.
This is how the reading of the decision is being this April 27, 2022:
A judge will decide whether to preclude the investigation against former President Álvaro Uribe as requested by the Prosecutor’s Office. #WeekNews https://t.co/4b2xyUJIH5
– Week Magazine (@RevistaSemana) April 27, 2022
The shadow of paramilitarism
Former Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez was linked to an investigation related to the birth of the Metro Block of Self-Defense Forces in Antioquia.
By then, Monsalve was the son of the mayordomo of the Guacharacas hacienda, of which the Uribe Vélez were owners, reported the W Radius.
A debate, which set a precedent
On September 17, 2014 at the Congress of the republic, when a political control debate ended in a heated 10-hour debate.
It was Uribe to whom they discussed political control, and there, the senator of the democratic pole, Ivan Cepedapointed out to his colleague alleged links with paramilitarism.
Cepeda mentioned the version of two ex-paramilitaries from Antioquia, J.uan Guillermo Monsalve and Pablo Hernán Sierra, who said that supposedly the Metro Block of the Self-Defense Forces had been born in the Guacharacas farm, of the Uribe Vélez.
The most critical point of that debate was when the senator mentioned that the former paramilitaries said that everything had been “with the permission of the former president.”
Uribe announced that he would denounce Cepeda.
That same day he left Congress and went straight to the Palace of Justice, filed the complaint.
The telephone interceptions gave a twist to the case, and the former president went from complainant to denounced and investigated.
Authorities found people close to Uribe would have pressured and tried to bribe the witnesses to change the version they had given to Cepeda.
And so the case has been going on for almost more than six years, in 2019, due to the double instance law, new rooms were created in the Supreme Court of Justice, the Court had to define the legal situation of the former president.
A year later, in 2020, a report of more than 1,000 pages determined that there would be enough evidence for the investigation against Uribe to continue.
By that date, there were already more witnesses against the former governor of Antioquia.
