Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has been found guilty of witness tampering and bribery in a landmark trial, becoming the country’s first ex-president to ever be found guilty at trial.
Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia ruled on Monday that there was enough evidence to determine that Uribe, 73, conspired with a lawyer to coax three former members of paramilitary groups who were in prison into changing testimony they had provided to Ivan Cepeda, a left-wing senator who had launched an investigation into Uribe’s alleged ties to a paramilitary group in the 1990s.
The case dates to 2012, when Uribe filed a libel suit against Cepeda with the Supreme Court. But in a twist, the high court dismissed the charges against Cepeda and began investigating Uribe in 2018.
Uribe faces up to 12 years in