Former Colombian conservative president Álvaro Uribe, sentenced to 12 years in prison for the crimes of procedural fraud and witness bribe, said the trial he ordered him was biased. He denounced that International Justice will have to examine the actions of Judge Sandra Heredia, whom he also accused of disrespecting his family.
“These deviations of temperament, this intemprance against the defense, against my family, against me, show that there was bias here and this should be considered by the national justice system, the competent bodies and the International Justice System,” he argued on Friday (1).
Uribe asked the floor to argue in his favor after heredy, judge of the 44th Criminal Court of the Bogota Circuit, read the sentence against him.
“This is a sentence that abuses, that exceeds the legal, a sentence that goes against legal rules, against ethics, morals,” said the former president, 73, who emphasized: “This is a sentence with political and biased determinants.”
The former Mandannager and founder of the Directory Democratic Directors, opposed to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, insisted that there was a “political speech” to condemn him last Monday, when he was considered guilty of both crimes.
All of this is part of a lawsuit that Uribe himself began in 2012, when he sued the left -wing senator Iván Cepeda, who at the time prepared a Senate complaint against him for his supposed bindings with the paramilitary, before the Supreme Court of Justice by alleged manipulation of witnesses.
However, the magistrate of the case not only rejected the complaint, but ordered an investigation against the former president for trying to “buy” false witnesses in prisons, through lawyer Diego Cadena, with whom he kept in touch, to witness against Cepeda.
“There is no single evidence that supports this political decision that condemns me,” said Uribe, who contested the prosecution’s argument, accepted by the judge, that he sent Cadena to find witnesses against a certain paramilitar.
