BOGOTA, Colombia — U.S. State Secretary Marco Rubio was outraged on Friday after a judge sentenced Álvaro Uribe, a former two-term president of Colombia, to 12 years of house arrest.
Circuit Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia’s sentencing on Friday in Bogotá follows Uribe’s convictions for witness tampering and bribery in procedural fraud.
“Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland,” Rubio wrote on X.
Uribe, 73, served from 2002 to 2010 and strengthened the Colombian military’s relationship with the United States to weaken the leftist Marxist guerrillas.
“You have treated me in the worst possible way,” Uribe told Heredia.
Noticias RCN aired the tense exchange between Uribe and Heredia after she mentioned his sons.
“I won’t accept that you mess with my family,” Uribe told Heredia.
The judge criticized Uribe’s sons for not having been in court during the process and went on to silence the former president.
“Will you please be quiet, Mr. Uribe.”
Heredia also banned the Harvard-educated Democrat from running for public office for eight years in Colombia and fined him over half a million dollars.
Heredia ordered that Uribe “proceed immediately to his residence where he will comply with house arrest”.
Before the hearing, Uribe, who also served as a Colombian senator and mayor of Medellín, announced on X that he was working diligently to appeal his case with the Supreme Court of Bogotá.
“One must think much more about the solution than the problem,” Uribe wrote in Spanish.
After Uribe’s conviction on July 28, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a former member leftist guerrilla member, released a statement on X saying the conviction stemmed from an investigation into Uribe’s alleged links to right-wing paramilitaries.
Uribe said his political opponents fabricated the bribery case after the investigation showed there wasn’t any evidence against him. He described the case as a “persecution” and Petro’s administration as a “neo-communist dictatorship.”
Uribe, who founded the Centro Democrático political party in 2014, has been critical of the 2016 peace treaty and said it was too lenient with former leftist guerrilla members.
Sen. Miguel Uribe Turbay, the grandson of the 25th president of Colombia, was seeking the CD party’s nomination when he survived an assassination attempt on June 7, but remained hospitalized.
Uribe Turbay is not related to Uribe, the former president. Colombia is set to hold presidential elections on May 31, 2026.
Related on the web
Wall Street Journal Editorial: The Railroading of Colombia’s Álvaro Uribe
Related YouTube video (Spanish)
Copyright 2025 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.
