By: National Leadership of Unidad Obrero y Socialista – UNITE!

Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia will formally announce the content of the sentence regarding the criminal process for procedural fraud and bribery of witnesses of which Álvaro Uribe Vélez is accused at the hearing held on Monday, July 28.

Behind the legal process

The trial began in 2012 when Iván Cepeda, a senator from the Democratic Pole, expressed in Congress his suspicion of the former president’s involvement in the creation of the Metro Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); Uribe responded by suing Cepeda for aggravated slander and procedural fraud.

The Supreme Court of Justice addressed the case for four years; in addition to finding no evidence against Cepeda and dismissing the case, it found evidence against Uribe. Although Uribe stated that he would never resign from the Senate to avoid the Court’s jurisdiction, this was precisely what he did in August 2020 after the Court ordered his preventive home detention.

Ordinary justice took care of his case and a judge ordered Uribe’s release since the Prosecutor’s Office decided that there was no evidence to prosecute him. The indictment was issued by Gilberto Iván Villarreal and filed by the Attorney General’s Office, in the hands of Francisco Roberto Barbosa who intended to, in case he had to accuse anyone, proceed with irregularities in his accusation so that he could stablish a limit on what could be done in the process. It is evident how this institution of the regime did everything to protect and cover up for Uribe, even beyond legal limits as lawyer Miguel Ángel Del Río points out, to achieve the estoppel.

For this reason, Uribe’s defense lawyers twice requested the closure of the case, which was denied by both the courts of first instance and the Superior Court of Bogotá, until in 2024 another prosecutor decided to accuse him and the trial began this year, where the main strategy of the defense has been delaying maneuvers as evidenced in the trials broadcast live since February, in parallel to the trial of Diego Cadena who was Uribe’s lawyer and acted under his instructions.

What is the relevance of Uribe’s trial?

It should be noted that, regarding the accusation against Álvaro Uribe, the Court raised the figure of a “determiner” – a person who organizes and puts their plan into operation, not a third-party plan. He has a hierarchical position of power and dominance over others. He is not a “co-author”, where contributions are divided among those involved.

The Colombian working class and popular sectors find this trial relevant not only due to the fact that Uribe may become the first former Colombian president to be criminally convicted, but because of the illusion of justice in front of a person that represents landowners and the most reactionary sector of the bourgeoisie, who has defended the interests of the lumpen bourgeoisie, being part of it, and has guaranteed the complete subjugation to US imperialism.

Imperialism and Trump’s government have defended Uribe, just as they openly try to defend Brazil’s coup-monger Bolsonaro.  The Colombian-American senator from the State of Ohio for the Republican Party Bernie Moreno – nephew of the Colombian Roberto Moreno Mejía, founder of the Amarilo construction company, and brother of Luis Alberto Moreno, former ambassador to Washington during the governments of Andrés Pastrana and Álvaro Uribe himself, and former president of the Inter–American Development Bank (IDB) – said that the trial against Uribe “is a very dangerous path for who should be one of the main allies of the United States in Latin America.” In addition, Álvaro Uribe Vélez has been a key element in multiple crimes against humanity and attacks against the working class and popular sectors; carrying forward measures directly backed by the different governments of the United States. Thus:

• as governor, he promoted the Convivir, which served as a legal basis for the expansion of paramilitarism, his relatives and government officials were also linked to the AUC and massacres such as the one in El Aro that was related to the rescue of Mario Uribe Escobar, Álvaro Uribe’s cousin.
• through Democratic Security and military operations such as Mariscal and Orión, he promoted the internal enemy policy focused on the guerrillas and the mass movement, and the counterinsurgency policy that gave free rein to the militarization of civilian life, the persecution of organizations, the criminalization of protest and even the destruction of working class organizations, as he stigmatized and persecuted opponents, human rights defenders, journalists and trade unionists under the narrative that they were helpers or collaborators of terrorism. On the other hand, Democratic Security encouraged extrajudicial executions, such as the 6402 that the JEP has documented, because the pressure from the high commands to increase the casualties motivated to kidnap and murder civilians to present them as guerrillas killed in combat.
• during his government (2002-2010) forced displacement grew exponentially, facilitating the dispossession of land – according to UNHCR figures, more than 3 million people were displaced amid clashes in conflict zones linked to economic interests such as mining and oil palm, in which paramilitaries and public forces participated. In addition, he promoted private investment in rural areas with a strong paramilitary presence; many dispossessed lands ended up in the hands of large businessmen or agro-industrialists allied to the government’s security model.
• in 2002 he promoted Law 789, a counter labor reform that extended the daytime working hours by paying the night surcharge only from 10 pm, increased labor flexibility and promoted outsourcing, also increasing informal employment and precariousness.

Will there be justice?

Since the first polemics in which Uribe has been involved, the victims and the Colombian people in general have been between the hope of justice and the pessimism that everything will continue with impunity, during this trial he has been no exception. While a part of the population celebrates the process as the maximum triumph, another doubts that there will be a conviction based on the experience of inoperability, revictimization and impunity by the Colombian justice, and warns that if there is a conviction, these minor crimes are penalized with jail between 6 and 12 years, but it is unlikely that the sentence will exceed 8 years for which it would have the privilege of house for jail, evidencing once again that prison and sentences handed down by the bourgeois justice are a weapon of class domination and not a tool to guarantee the truth, reparation and not repetition, being the big businessmen and the leaders of the regime who have everything in their favor.

A conviction in the first instance is a small triumph in a long battle that still continues, on the one hand, in the judicial sphere, because the defense can appeal, but more importantly in the political sphere and the class struggle. That is why we promote following in the footsteps of the survivors of the dictatorship in Argentina, whose civil courts condemned a genocide committed by their own state, convicting even six times more repressors (more than a thousand convicted) than the 150 Nazi genocidaires convicted after the end of world War II.

This experience of struggle teaches us that we cannot simply call for defending and respecting the independence and autonomy of the judicial branch of the bourgeois state as the Petro government does, because as in Argentina, the institutions of the regime will promote impunity and oblivion without reparation. We must press through mobilization and protest for the maximum sentence to be achieved and not settle for crumbs, while we make progress in strengthening the organizations of our class and continue fighting for true justice, until we achieve the consolidation of a People’s Tribunal composed of the victims, the only body that could really give a trial and verdict, judge

We demand the maximum sentence of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez for procedural fraud
and bribery of witnesses! May he be prosecuted for all his crimes!

We demand a common prison for Uribe and all those responsible for State terrorism!
No more house for prison for the genocidaires!

I strongly reject any interference by the Trump administration
in the judicial processes of the country.

For the opening of all the archives of State terrorism and the DA’s shenanigans!

We demand that the investigation of the Justice and Peace demobilization process be opened!

That investigations be opened into the policies of Uribe being governor and president!

Let the investigations for Uribe’s links and participation move forward
in paramilitary groups!

Let’s set up a People’s Tribunal composed of the victims to judge
to Álvaro Uribe Vélez for his crimes against humanity!

Bogota / Medellin, July 27, 2025

Article originally published in https://eltrabajadorsocialista.org/