Ex-Colombian president Álvaro Uribe guilty of witness-tampering

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BOGOTA — Álvaro Uribe has become the first former Colombian president to be convicted of a crime.

A court in Bogotá found the 73-year-old, who was president from 2002 to 2010, guilty of witness-tampering and a fraud charge.

He was convicted of attempting to bribe witnesses in a separate investigation into allegations that he had ties to right-wing paramilitaries, responsible for human rights abuses.

Each charge carries up to 12 years in prison. Uribe is expected to appeal the verdict, having always maintained his innocence.

Uribe is best known for mounting an aggressive offensive against leftist guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) during his tenure. He has always denied ties to right-wing paramilitaries.

The former president sat shaking his head as the verdict was read out, AFP reported, in the trial that has seen more than 90 witnesses testify.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has condemned the court's decision, accusing the country's judiciary of being weaponised.

The former president's "only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland," he wrote on the social media site, X.

The result comes more than a decade after Uribe was first charged in 2012.

At that time, he accused a left-wing senator, Ivan Cepeda, of a plot against him. Uribe claimed Cepeda wanted to falsely link him to right-wing paramilitary groups involved in Colombia's internal armed conflict.

But the country's Supreme Court dismissed the former president's claims against Cepeda, instead investigating Uribe for the ties.

The former president was then accused of contacting jailed ex-fighters and bribing them to deny connections to the paramilitary groups - tampering with key witnesses.

Uribe said he had wanted to convince the ex-fighters to tell the truth.

Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s with the stated goal of taking on poverty and marginalisation. They fought the Marxist-inspired guerrilla groups that had themselves battled the state two decades prior.

Many of the armed groups developed in the standoff made an income from the cocaine trade. Violent and deadly fighting between them and with the state has produced lasting rivalries for trafficking routes and resources.

Uribe was praised by Washington for his hard-line approach to Farc rebels – but was a divisive politician whose critics say did little to improve the inequality and poverty in the country.

Farc signed a peace deal with Uribe's successor in 2016 though violence from disarmed groups persists in Colombia. — BBC