BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Former president Álvaro Uribe, one of the most powerful leaders in Colombian history, will become the first president to be called to a criminal trial, on charges of procedural fraud and bribery.
Uribe, who served as Colombia’s president from 2002 to 2010, was once a wildly popular leader and U.S. ally whose iron-fist approach was credited with helping turn the tide of the longest-running civil conflict in the hemisphere. Long after leaving the presidential palace, Uribe continued to loom over Colombia as one of its most influential yet controversial politicians, helping elect two successors and serving as a senator even as he faced accusations of sweeping human rights violations.
But for more than a decade, the former president has been enmeshed in a witness-tampering scandal in the country’s judicial system. It dates to 2012, when Uribe accused a fellow senator, Iván Cepeda, of bribing witnesses in a conspiracy to connect Uribe to the country’s right-wing paramilitary groups. Then, in 2018, the country’s Supreme Court turned the case on its head, dismissing Uribe’s accusations and instead investigating whether Uribe had been manipulating witnesses in the case in an obstruction of justice.
The high court in 2020 briefly ordered Uribe held under house arrest as the investigation continued. Prosecutors under previous presidential administrations have twice requested to close the case, requests that were denied by judges.
Now, Colombia’s new attorney general, Luz Adriana Camargo Garzón, chosen by the Supreme Court last month, has decided to move forward with the case. Her office released a statement Tuesday saying prosecutors will charge Uribe with witness bribing and procedural fraud, based on the physical and material evidence collected.
Uribe has repeatedly denied the allegations against him and any ties to paramilitary groups.
For generations of Colombians, Uribe has been seen as a giant in politics. To some, he is a revered war hero who rescued the government from collapse at the hands of leftist guerrillas. Under his leadership, killings, kidnappings and other attacks plummeted. The country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as the FARC, significantly diminished in size and power under his presidency.
In 2009, U.S. President George W. Bush awarded Uribe the Presidential Medal of Freedom, praising his “resolute and uncompromising” leadership at a time when Colombia “was near the point of being, at best, a failed state — or, at worst, a narco-state,” Bush said.
But Uribe also presided over the country during a time that has been considered one of the darkest in recent Colombian history. In a scandal known as the “false positives” case, the Colombian military carried out extrajudicial killings of thousands of people falsely labeled as enemy combatants, according to Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace. At least 6,402 Colombians were killed between 2002 and 2008, according to the court.