A judge from Bogotá has failed this Monday that the former president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) is criminally responsible for the crime of bribery of witnesses in criminal action and for procedural fraud, within the framework of a case that dates back to 2012.
Judge 44 Criminal of Knowledge of Bogotá, Sandra Liliana Heredia Aranda, has made public at a hearing that has been guilty for six hours for the crime of bribe Through his lawyer, Diego Cadena, he tried to bribe, among others, to exparamilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve.
The judge has considered that the founder and honorary president of the Conservative Political Party offered benefits, through emissaries, to persons deprived of liberty for their benefit in several cases they have open.
The magistrate has also proved that Uribe tried to manipulate witnesses to link Senator Iván Cepeda with illegal facts.
Acquitted of simple bribery charges
In addition, The ex -president has been acquitted of simple bribery charges, But it has been convicted of procedural fraud under a series of documents, including one signed by the paramilitary Carlos Enrique Vélez, whose content has been demonstrated as false and that was presented with the intention that an investigation began and sentenced to Senator Cepeda, as collected by the Colombian radio station Radio Caracol.
After reading the ruling, the judge has communicated the citation for reading the sentence next Friday, August 1 at 2:00 p.m. (local time). For its part, the prosecutor 1 delegate before the Court, Marlenne Orjuela, has asked that the penalty for the former president be at least 108 months in prison, that is, more than 9 years. However, the former president’s defense has five days to support an appeal to Heredia’s decision.
The case began in 2012 when Uribe denounced Senator Iván Cepeda, ensuring that he had traveled the country’s prisons to present false testimonies against him about the emergence of paramilitarism in the Antioquia region.
However, after the contribution of evidence, Several versions indicated that former president’s lawyers sought to manipulate witnesses to point to Cepeda, So the latter went from accused to victim, unlike Uribe, demanding, who became investigated.
