The time for Álvaro Uribe's appointment in the Supreme Court of Justice has arrived

[Akrapovic]

Por primera vez en Colombia, un expresidente irá a una indagatoria en el alto tribunal.

This Tuesday, 441 days after the Supreme Court of Justice decided, in an unprecedented event, to open a formal investigation against a former president, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the current senator of the Democratic Center, will have to attend the high court for an investigation .
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Uribe, one of the most controversial politicians in the country's recent history, must arrive at 8 am in the offices of the Instruction Hall on 72nd Street with 8th, in Bogotá. There he will be interrogated about the investigation that the Court has against him since July 24, 2018.

That day, the then magistrate José Luis Barceló, of the Criminal Chamber, considered that there were elements to investigate Uribe for bribery and procedural fraud.

Allegedly, the file says, he would have tried to influence the testimony of former Juan Guillermo Monsalve to retract the accusations in which he links him with the birth of the Self-Defense Groups in Antioquia, a group he demobilized in his government, in 2006.

Barceló opened that process after filing in February 2018 a complaint that Uribe had filed against the senator of the Democratic Pole Iván Cepeda. According to the Court, who allegedly manufactured witnesses was not Cepeda, as Uribe said, but there were elements to believe it was the opposite.
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Since then, two investigations against Uribe were opened: one for allegedly pressuring exparamilitaries to speak against Cepeda (a case that is barely in the preliminary stage), and another for allegedly pressing Juan Guillermo Monsalve to retract, which will lead him this Tuesday to give explanations to justice. This is the only one of at least 14 processes that Uribe has in the Court for which there is a formal investigation.

In the latter case, the representative to the Chamber Álvaro Hernán Prada, linked to the alleged pressures of the witnesses of the case, is also called for investigation.

In the midst of a heated environment, and the polarization that research generates between detractors and supporters of Uribe, marches are expected both for and against the powerful politician who remained in the presidency for two periods and was key in subsequent presidential elections.

During the proceedings, which Uribe will go to with his lawyer Jaime Granados, he will sit in front of Judge César Augusto Reyes Medina, who leads the investigation. In March, he was the third magistrate to assume the process, after inheriting the case of Cristina Lombana, who was challenged and had to depart. She received the file from Barceló, who lost competence to investigate the former president on account of the changes in the matter of judgment brought by the double instance law.

This Court is not made up of the magistrates who at the time had serious differences with Uribe amid the scandal of the illegal blows of the DAS.
The defense

Uribe's lawyers say that the former president was not respected due process because he was not given the opportunity to go to a free version before calling him for an investigation. They claim that transcripts of the case have been adulterated and that Barceló illegally intercepted him when the ex-president's phone ended up being thrown into an investigation that was not his own, but the one that the Court was following against former Congressman Nilton Córdoba Manyoma.

That fact led Barceló - who is no longer in the high court because his term ended - to have to give public explanations, and it cost him a preliminary process in the Commission of Accusation, which is still open.

Senator Uribe's lawyers also say they have never bought witnesses, that the ex-Juan Juan Monsalve was the one who sought them because he wanted to recant, that he lies in saying he was pressured, and that Iván Cepeda is the one who has tried to change statements to harm the ex-president. “Former President Uribe only fears God. There is nothing criminally against him that is relevant, ”Granados said in a statement in August.

Although Uribe's defense asked the Court several times to annul the case, none of its resources prospered.

With the case firm, the investigator, Judge Reyes Medina, would have a list of at least 100 questions for Uribe, official sources said. Some, what is your relationship with people who were visiting exparamilitaries in prisons? What was sought in those visits? Have you ever offered them money or benefits, especially to Juan Guillermo Monsalve?