Former Colombian President Uribe was given a 12-year house arrest sentence, according to the document

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was given 12 years of house arrest on Friday for abusing the legal system and bribery of a public official, according to a sentencing document seen by Reuters and a person familiar with the case.

In a case that has been going on for about 13 years, Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia found Uribe guilty of both charges of witness tampering on Monday. He has always insisted that he is innocent.

Reporters in the area also got their hands on the sentencing paper hours before Heredia is supposed to read the sentence in court.

The paper also said that Uribe would be fined $578,000. He would also be banned from public office for more than eight years.

The judge’s lawyers have said that Uribe will fight the decision. He is to go to Rionegro, which is in Antioquia province, and report to the police there. He should then “proceed immediately to his residence where he will comply with house arrest,” the document said.

He was found guilty, making him the first former president of the country to ever be found guilty in court. The verdict came less than a year before Colombia’s presidential election in 2026, where many of Uribe’s friends and followers are running for office.

For Colombia’s ties with the US, it could also mean something. As a result of Uribe’s conviction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that “radical judges weaponized Colombia’s judicial branch.” As a result, some analysts have said that the U.S. might cut off help to Colombia.

Uribe, 73, and those who support him have always said that the process is unfair, while those who don’t support him have said that it is his just reward for being accused for decades of having ties to dangerous right-wing paramilitaries but never found guilty of a crime until now.

TESTIMONIALS FROM FORMER PARAMILITARIES

As president from 2002 to 2010, Uribe led a military operation against leftist guerrillas. He was charged with charges that he told a lawyer to pay off jailed paramilitaries to disprove claims that he was connected to those groups.

Senator Ivan Cepeda, a leftist, made those claims after interviewing former paramilitary members who said Uribe had helped their groups in Antioquia, where he was governor.

In 2012, Uribe said that Cepeda managed the witnesses in a plan to connect him to the paramilitaries. However, six years later, the Supreme Court said that Cepeda had not paid or pushed the former paramilitaries to give false testimony.

The court instead said that Uribe and his supporters were the ones who put pressure on the witnesses. Cepeda is considered a victim in the case and was at the hearing on Monday.
Two people who used to be paramilitaries and are now in jail said that Diego Cadena, the lawyer who used to defend Uribe, offered them money to lie for Uribe.

Aside from Uribe, Cadena, who is also being charged, has rejected the charges and testified in support of the president.

Each charge could lead to a prison term of six to twelve years.

Uribe is the leader of the strong Democratic Center party and was a senator for many years before and after he was president. In 2020, he was put under house arrest for two months.

He has said over and over that he sent heads of paramilitary groups to the United States.

According to Colombia’s truth commission, paramilitary groups killed more than 205,000 people after making deals with Uribe’s government to stop fighting. This is almost half of the 450,000 people who died in the ongoing civil war.

Paramilitaries, guerrilla groups, and members of the armed forces have all done crimes like sexual abuse, forced disappearances, moving people, and more.

Latin American presidents like Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama have all been found guilty and sometimes jailed.