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On account of the investigation revealed this Saturday by EL TIEMPO, the attention around the case against Álvaro Uribe – for alleged bribery of witnesses and procedural fraud – is focused on the Paisa lawyer Mercedes Arroyave Ardila.
The 71-year-old professional from Medellín appears accompanying Senator Iván Cepeda to various prisons in the country to speak with convicts who later ended up linked to the process against the former president.
(We invite you to read: Uribe case: lost witness and last minute evidence unleash a storm)
In fact, it was seized Juan Guillermo Monsalve, the so-called star witness of the case, to whom the Court has given absolute credibility and protection. And also seized Pablo Hernán Sierra, the same one who has said that the Uribe were alleged co-founders of the Metro block of the Auc.
(You may be interested: The new evidence that is appearing in the Uribe case)
The Court ordered her to testify, in September 2019, but she did not appear. And the same has happened with the Prosecutor’s Office, which has until March 6 to define whether to present an indictment against the former president or preclude him.
What does it know and why does it not appear?
The freshest data that EL TIEMPO found about the professional is in Yopal, (Casanare). In fact, he appears there managing a duplicate of his identity document.
(Also: The strategy of Cadena, Uribe’s former lawyer, to be free)
It was also established that she has two annotations in the Prosecutor’s Office, related to the registration as a displaced person, to commercialize a property that was in her name, but that had legal proceedings that restricted its commercialization.
In addition, resolutions of the liquidated Colombian Institute of Rural Development (INCODER) are verified to facilitate the sale of a property that was mortgaged.
The Supreme Court also considered it important to listen to attorney Arroyave. He cited her but never appeared.
For the defense of the former president, she is an exceptional witness to the irregular activities carried out by Cepeda in the search for false witnesses against the Uribe, in exchange for judicial benefits.
Cepeda – a victim in the case – told EL TIEMPO that it is clear that the Prosecutor’s Office is twisting the investigation, leaving aside the accused (Uribe), investigating him and the witness Monsalve and “seeking impunity for Uribe.”
(On the subject: Monsalve, a witness in the Uribe case, ‘they cannot reduce protection’)
And he added that the last he heard from the lawyer who accompanied him to various prisons is that he had received serious threats against him.
Álvaro Uribe Vélez, former president, and Iván Cepeda, senator of the Republic.
In the formulation of charges against Uribe, it is indicated that testimonies speak of his intervention to collect information in prisons and even in the alleged preparation of documents.
One of the testimonies indicates that Monsalve related the lawyer with other convicts, to whom Arroyave had spoken about the possibility of availing themselves of Law 413 for the delivery of graves. And they say that he was asking for information about Uribe.
(Also: Monsalve’s record, the ‘expara’ who unleashed the process against Uribe)
But the lawyer has not been able to refute that information because it has not been presented to the authorities.
This is one of the permits in which it is recorded that the lawyer Arroyave entered the prisons together with Iván Cepeda.
What did the court say?
In any case, the Court did not give credence to the testimonies that linked the professional with alleged offers of gifts in exchange for information on Uribe.
“The way in which these statements were collected has already been seen, which together with the circumstances of manner, time and place that the alleged witnesses claimed to have been the subject of offers of all kinds by the lawyer Mercedes Arroyave Ardila and Iván Cepeda Castro, In order for them to allegedly make a false statement against Álvaro Uribe, it becomes unavoidable to conclude that there is no serious or reliable basis to grant credibility to those sayings, and on the contrary, there is to warn the intention of the declarants to be untrue and of Diego Cadena and Senator Álvaro Uribe to bring them before the administration of justice in a conscious and deliberate manner, “the high court said.
(See here all the articles of the Investigative Unit of EL TIEMPO)
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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