The Bogotá Court acquitted former President Álvaro Uribe of the crimes of procedural fraud and witness bribery for which he had been convicted two and a half months earlier by Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia. In a decision revealed Tuesday, the Criminal Chamber overturned that ruling, highlighting that it was riddled with serious errors and biases that violated the former president's rights.
With a report by Judge Manuel Antonio Merchán, the Court determined that it was not proven that seven years ago Uribe instructed his lawyer Diego Cadena to bribe prisoners and former paramilitaries, as the Prosecutor's Office had proven in its accusation.
According to the ruling, which runs to more than 700 pages, in August, Judge Heredia accepted evidence as credible that her office did not fully evaluate. In particular, she failed to consider the inconsistencies in the testimony of witnesses such as Carlos Enrique Vélez, a former paramilitary known as Víctor.
This case dates back to 2011, when in an interview with then-Congressman Iván Cepeda, Juan Guillermo Monsalve spoke of the alleged connection between Uribe and the AUC's"Metro" bloc in Antioquia. The legislator presented the interview to Congress, and the former president announced a complaint against him for allegedly twisting witnesses to harm him.
After several proceedings, in February 2018, the Supreme Court declined to investigate Cepeda and instead opened an inquiry into the former president, who at the time was a senator for the Democratic Center party. In March of that year, a controversial interception of Uribe's cell phone occurred, which was dismissed on Tuesday by the Bogotá Court, considering it a wiretap. For several days, the former president's phone was tapped under a court order addressed to Nilton Córdoba, who was being investigated in another case. The Court explained that it was a mistake, but the Tribunal indicated that it was a violation of the defendant's privacy.
"The Court's assessment of the unlawfulness of the order concludes that the right to privacy was violated, given that the order was based on apparent information, without sound grounds. The invocation of 'unforeseen and inevitable discovery' lacks legal meaning and does not legitimize the infringement. The involuntary error does not invalidate the unlawfulness, since the interception was based on erroneous data, and the belated discovery that the number did not correspond to former Congressman Nilton Córdoba does not constitute an unforeseen discovery, but rather gross negligence," the Court concludes in its ruling.
