The American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, criticized the conviction of former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe on Monday (28), saying that the trial was instrumentalized by radical judges of the Colombian judiciary.
“The instrumentalization of the judicial power of radical judges has now established a worrying precedent,” said the head of American diplomacy in the X, arguing that “the only crime of former Colombian president Uribe was to have fought tirelessly to defend his homeland.”
Uribe, 73, and leader of the opposing party democratic party, became the first former Colombian president convicted criminally, after being responsible, in the first instance, for crimes of bribery in criminal performance and procedural fraud. He may face a penalty of four to eight years in prison.
The lawsuit against the former Mandanker began in 2012, when Uribe sued the left-wing senator Iván Cepeda in the Supreme Court for alleged manipulation of witnesses. At that time, Cepeda prepared a complaint in the Senate against Uribe for alleged bonds with paramilitation.
At the time, magistrate José Luis Barceló did not open an investigation against the congressman, but began a lawsuit against the former agent for alleged manipulation of witnesses so that they would not depuse him.
“Most powerful man in the country,” says judge in reading the decision
In reading the decision, which extended for more than ten hours, the judge of the Bogota Penal Circuit, Sandra Heredia, validated almost all the evidence presented by the prosecution, including the interceptions of Uribe’s cell phone and the recordings with a spy clock, which the defense asked to be discarded by alleged illegality.
In the intercepted conversations of Uribe’s cell phone, the former Mandanician talks to lawyer Diego Cadena, who is also being tried for allegedly trying to bribes in prisons the former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve and other alleged witnesses to favor the former president against Senator Cepeda, according to the prosecution.
The judge defined Uribe as “the most powerful man in the country,” while about Cadena said “she was a rising lawyer, with great professional aspirations” and “intellectual needs” she saw in approaching the former president “the expectation of having the opportunity to climb a position of power and professional prestige.”
Regarding the reading of the sentence against Uribe, scheduled for next Friday (1st), the judge said that the law provides for the crimes for which it was convicted “more than four years and less than eight”.
Petro accuses Rubio of violating Colombia sovereignty with criticism
Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio of violating the country’s sovereignty after claiming that the conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe is due to “instrumentalization of the Colombian judicial power.”
“An intrusion in judicial matters of another country is an intrusion in national sovereignty,” Petro wrote on social network X on Monday night, when he stressed that “the world must respect the judges of Colombia” because “many were murdered for helping the world.”
