Former President Alvaro Uribe (Image: Twitter)
Colombia’s Supreme Court confirmed that former president Alvaro Uribe’s 12-year prison sentence will remain suspended until after the appeals process.
The appeals chamber of the Supreme Court reaffirmed the decision reached by the Bogota appeals court, which is looking into Uribe’s fraud and bribery conviction, in August.
The protection of Alvaro Uribe Velez’s right to liberty is confirmed after verifying that the reasons set forth by the Forty-Fourth Criminal Circuit Court of Bogota for immediately restricting his liberty do not meet a constitutionally admissible standard of motivation.
Supreme Court
Uribe’s defense attorney, Jaime Granados, had requested the suspension of the 12-year prison sentence that could be served at home on the condition that the far-right former president complies with house arrest rules.
According to Granados, the sentence violated the former president’s right to dignity, due process, and the presumption of innocence.
Uribe was sentenced to prison by a Bogota court because he filed fraudulent criminal charges against the leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda in 2014.
The charges were based on false testimonies by witnesses, who sought to discredit investigations into the role of the former president and his brother Santiago in the creation of paramilitary groups in the 1990’s.
Uribe is currently being investigated for his alleged role in two massacres and the assassination of a human rights worker, who criticized the former president’s failure to act against far-right political violence in the Antioquia province when Uribe was governor.
The fraud and bribery investigation additionally revealed testimonies of former paramilitaries who testified that the Uribe brothers were actively involved in the creation and expansion of the Bloque Metro paramilitary group.
Cepeda’s investigations into Colombia’s armed conflict revealed further evidence of the Uribe Clan’s alleged role in paramilitary violence that claimed tens of thousands of lives in between 1995 and 2010.
The senator’s investigations further confirmed Uribe’s close ties to the crime families that made up the Medellin Cartel between 1976 and 1993.
