"Worrisome precedent": Rubio denounces "weaponization" of Justice in Colombia after controversial ruling against Uribe

Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned on Monday the "instrumentalization" of the Colombian judicial system after learning of the conviction of former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who became on July 28 the first former president in the history of Colombia to be convicted by a court, pending the process moving towards an inevitable appeal.

"Former Colombian President Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent," Rubio wrote on his official 'X' account, hours after the controversial ruling read by Bogota's 44th criminal judge, Sandra Liliana Heredia.

The statements of the high-ranking U.S. official were accompanied by similar messages from several Republican congressmen from Florida.

One of them was Senator Rick Scott, who described Alvaro Uribe as a leader of freedom.

"The political persecution and brutal attacks under Petro’s socialist regime are unacceptable. They won’t silence the fight for freedom. The U.S. stands with the people of Colombia and will not turn a blind eye to injustice."

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar was one of the most critical of the process:

"Today justice was not done in Colombia. An infamy was consummated against Alvaro Uribe, the man who rescued the country from terrorism and confronted the FARC when no one else dared. He is condemned because he refused to make pacts with criminals, because he is an obstacle for the radical left that wants to take power and turn Colombia into another Venezuela."

In the same vein, Congressman Carlos Giménez described the process as a farce: "President Álvaro Uribe is a patriot. He’s the Abraham Lincoln of Latin America & has just been sentenced in @petrogustavo’s kangaroo courts."

The two were joined by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who criticized Colombia's current president, leftist Gustavo Petro.

"As I have stated on numerous occasions, the decision involving a judicial farce, political persecution, and a witch hunt against former President @AlvaroUribeVel represents a clear violation of the rule of law and reflects the growing influence of far-left forces aligned with @petrogustavo."

What does the ruling say?

Judge Sandra Heredia, who has divided Colombia after the reading of her ruling, found "proven" that former president Uribe incurred the crime of bribery in criminal proceedings by determining that his lawyer, Diego Cadena, offered legal and monetary benefits to ex-paramilitaries to retract testimonies linking Uribe to former paramilitary groups in Antioquia during the 1990s.

During the extensive reading of the ruling, which lasted more than eight hours, the judge gave credibility to the declarations of former paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve and his ex-partner, who said they had been pressured to change their versions by people linked to Uribe. According to the ruling, the actions presented by the Prosecutor's Office were carried out both in person—in La Picota prison—and remotely, through communications from other cities.

The sentence, in the first instance, will enter an appeal instance according to the defense. However, time is against them, since the legal process expires on October 16, 2025.

An irregular process, say critics

While Judge Sandra Heredia attacked during the ruling the critics of the process—who accuse her of using justice to lead a vendetta against Uribe, the main person responsible for fighting the Colombian guerrilla and drug trafficking during his government (2002-2010)—the main evidence of the case continues to raise suspicions about the accusation against the president: the illegal wiretaps admitted by the magistrate.

The key evidence in the case was the wiretaps carried out in 2018. Uribe's defense denounced that these were illegal wiretaps, since the Supreme Court ordered to intercept, in reality, former congressman Nilton Córdoba, but due to an alleged "mistake," the former president was recorded.

However, the judge threw out the allegation and endorsed the "legality" of the wiretaps, rejecting the defense's accusations and supporting the conclusions of the Superior Court of Bogota and the Supreme Court, which also considered the evidence valid.

"This office considers that it cannot be affirmed that in the execution of the act of investigation an act of bad faith or an intentional irregularity concerted with the purpose of intercepting Mr. Uribe Velez had been presented," said Heredia, who concluded that the recordings allowed establishing contacts that sought to manipulate the testimony of witnesses.