BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — An appeals court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe for bribery and witness tampering for which he had been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest.
Uribe, 73, has denied any wrongdoing. He was sentenced in August following a nearly six-month trial in which prosecutors presented evidence that he attempted to influence witnesses who accused the law-and-order leader of having links to a paramilitary group in the 1990s.
The court on Tuesday said the conviction had “structural deficiencies,” used vague premises and lacked comprehensive analysis. Two of the three judges on the panel voted to overturn the conviction; the third thought it should be upheld.
Uribe, who governed from 2002 to 2010, has called his conviction political persecution, claiming that the judge was biased against him. In the appeal, his lawyers questioned the validity of the evidence and argued that the former president’s responsibility was not “unequivocally” proven.
Prosecutors and victims can appeal Tuesday’s ruling to Colombia’s Supreme Court. The former president, who was free pending his appeal, watched the proceedings remotely via video link.
The case has energized both Uribe’s supporters and critics, as the latest turn comes amid campaigning for next year’s legislative and presidential elections in Colombia. Uribe’s party, Democratic Center, has already said that Uribe will run for senator if his legal situation allows it. The original sentence included an 8-year ban on holding public office.
Sen. Paloma Valencia, an Uribe supporter, wrote on social platform X that she felt relieved by the latest decision.
“We have always trusted in his innocence, always defended his legacy and his good name,” she said.
The former president governed with strong support from the United States. He is a polarizing figure in Colombia, where many credit him for saving the country from becoming a failed state, while others associate him with human rights violations and the rise of paramilitary groups in the 1990s.
The judge in Uribe’s original trial said she had seen enough evidence to determine that Uribe conspired with a lawyer to coax three former paramilitary group members, who were in prison, into changing testimony they had provided to Iván Cepeda, a leftist senator who had launched an investigation into Uribe’s alleged ties to a paramilitary group.
Uribe in 2012 filed a libel suit against Cepeda in the Supreme Court. But in a twist, the high court in 2018 dismissed the accusations against Cepeda and began investigating Uribe.
A key point in the appeals court’s rationale to overturn Uribe’s conviction was the legality of wiretaps of Uribe’s phone. The court determined they had to be excluded as evidence because they were initiated by mistake while another person was under investigation.
President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday criticized the court’s decision to exclude the wiretaps, explaining on X that they were not private information because “Uribe’s voice appears speaking about bribes.”
The conservative former president is one of the most vocal opponents of Petro, Colombia’s first leftist head of state.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that “justice has prevailed” in the case of Uribe, who he said was the victim of a “witch hunt.”
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