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. The Colombian government, under Uribe’s successor, would later sign a peace agreement with the FARC.
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 — many of them unemployed and poor, some of them disabled — by soldiers who claimed their deaths were war casualties, according to the peace jurisdiction.
Uribe resigned from the Senate in 2020, in a move seen by many as a strategic effort to force the jurisdiction of his case from the Supreme Court to the attorney general’s office. The attorney general at the time was seen by many as closely aligned with then-President Iván Duque, an Uribe ally.
On Tuesday afternoon, Duque released a video defending his mentor who played a crucial role in his own election as president.
“Today we see with sadness this accusation that is made against him,” Duque said. “We know that not only will he come out ahead, but for him to come out ahead will be the demonstration that in Colombia there is true justice.”
While some Uribe allies may claim the charges amount to political persecution under the leftist government of President Gustavo Petro, the country’s new attorney general is not considered close to the president, said Colombian jurist Rodrigo Uprimny. Three previous judicial decisions, from the Supreme Court and from two independent judges, had already held up the case.
“Former president Uribe has for years tried to evade accountability by manipulating the justice system and abusing his political connections,” said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch and a former Colombian congresswoman. “This decision reminds Colombians that nobody is or should ever be above the law.”
