U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio questioned the guilty plea against former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, and stated that it sets a “worrying precedent.”
“The only crime of former Colombian President Uribe has been to fight tirelessly and defend his homeland. The instrumentalization of the Colombian judiciary by radical judges has set a worrying precedent,” the US Secretary of State said on his X account.
Rubio’s statements occurred hours after Judge Sandra Heredia of the 44th Criminal Court of Bogotá declared that the existence of the crime of bribery was proven in the investigation against Uribe.
The magistrate explained that the punishable conduct was proven based on the contacts between the lawyer Diego Cadena, Uribe’s representative, and the ex-paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve, who is incarcerated in a prison in Bogotá.
According to the judge, a campaign was launched for Monsalve to “lie to the Supreme Court of Justice and deny what he said” about the alleged links between Uribe and his brother Santiago with paramilitary groups. In addition, Monsalve had to maintain that his previous statements responded to a supposed manipulation by Senator Iván Cepeda Castro, who, according to the version presented, had obtained the testimony under promises of prison benefits.
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The judicial process originated in 2012, when Uribe reported Senator Cepeda to the Supreme Court for alleged witness tampering, in a context in which the congressman was preparing a complaint in the Senate against the former president for alleged links to paramilitarism. Magistrate José Luis Barceló, in charge of the case, decided not to investigate Cepeda and, instead, opened a process against Uribe for alleged witness tampering.
During the hearing, the judge validated as evidence the phone interceptions of the former president and the recordings made with a spy watch by Monsalve in La Picota prison. Uribe’s defense had requested the exclusion of this evidence for considering it illegal, but the judge maintained that “the evidentiary debate does not fall exclusively on the magnetophonic recordings attached to the trial, however, the legality of these was verified, elucidating the aspects related to the obtaining for which they were not used by illicit methods (…) these video recordings were also not obtained violating the right to privacy nor were they made in bad faith”. The judge also emphasized that hiding the recording from the interlocutor does not constitute a criminal conduct.
Monsalve, the main witness in the case, was part of the Metro Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and is the son of the administrator of the Guacharacas estate, owned by the Uribe family. In his statement before the Supreme Court of Justice, Monsalve stated that the Metro Bloc was founded on that farm between 1996 and 1997, with the participation of several people, including the Uribe Vélez brothers. According to his testimony, massacres subsequently carried out by paramilitary squads were planned on that estate, accusations that Uribe and his defense have consistently rejected.
The judge maintained that “it is obvious that the accused knew of the plan that was being hatched: to ambush Monsalve” to induce him to modify his testimony before the court. However, so far, the magistrate has not determined whether the former president is responsible for that crime as a determiner.
