BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s influential former President Álvaro Uribe on Wednesday denounced as “political vengeance” a transfer by nationwide prosecutors to deliver him to trial in a case of witness tampering that has shadowed his legacy.
Uribe insisted in a video message that there was no proof in opposition to him, a day after prosecutors introduced their intention to formally cost Uribe with bribery of witnesses in felony proceedings and procedural fraud.
That will make Uribe the primary former president to face trial in Colombia.
The case in opposition to Uribe derives from allegations made a decade in the past by an opposition senator that Uribe was tied to the creation of a paramilitary group. The previous president was accused of bribing former paramilitaries to vary their testimonies.
Uribe accused the senator of slander, however that case was dismissed, and the Supreme Court docket as a substitute opened a felony case in opposition to Uribe on allegations of manipulating witnesses.
“This trial is being carried out attributable to political presumptions, private animosities, political vengeance, with out proof to deduce that I used to be making an attempt to bribe witnesses or deceive justice,” mentioned Uribe, who served as president from 2002 to 2010.
Uribe was beneath home arrest within the case for 2 months in 2020.
Uribe might resist 12 years in jail on the cost of bribing witnesses and eight years in jail on the cost of procedural fraud.
Underneath earlier administrations, Colombian prosecutors tried twice to shut the case after saying they’d failed to seek out “felony accountability of the defendant.” These requests had been rejected by felony judges.
