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The Plenary Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice met this Friday, starting at 10 in the morning, to evaluate under what law the investigation that the Prosecutor’s Office has against the former president and former senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez for alleged bribery of witnesses should be carried out and procedural fraud.
The meeting took place in an extraordinary session in which a decision on the case was not reached, so it will meet again this Monday, at 9 in the morning.
In today’s Chamber, the magistrates managed to evaluate an impediment of magistrate Luis Antonio Hernández. The Plenary Chamber accepted his impediment so it will not participate in the decision that the high court will make.
The magistrates of the Full Chamber, made up of the members of the Civil, Criminal and Labor Chamber of the Court, will have to define this Monday the conflict of powers raised by the judge 30 for the control of guarantees on September 22.
(Read also: Why is the key decision in Uribe’s case left to the Court?)
Uribe’s defense had asked the judge to release him, a decision that she considered that she could evaluate. However, as Iván Cepeda’s lawyer – recognized as a civil party in the case against Uribe – affirmed that he did not have competence to make that decision, but that it corresponded to the General Prosecutor’s Office, that is why the judge referred this case for it.
While Uribe’s defense, the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes (who is investigating the former president) and the judge herself consider that this process should be carried out by Law 906 of 2004 (new system) and therefore it is a judge who must decide whether to release the former senator, Iván Cepeda’s lawyer thinks the opposite.
(Further: The 14 witnesses who will testify in the trial of lawyer Diego Cadena)
For Cepeda’s lawyer, this process should continue to be carried out by law 600 of 2000 (old system), which was the one with which it was developed in the Supreme Court of Justice, which investigated Uribe until he resigned from the Senate and that is why he passed the case to the Attorney General’s Office.
Thus, the Plenary Chamber will have to define two crucial issues for the investigation against Uribe, which is why he is imprisoned at his El Ubérrimo farm in Córdoba. You must establish under what law your case is taken (if the old or the new system) and, consequently, who is the authority in charge of assessing whether or not to release you.
But in addition, the system that is chosen will also depend on whether or not the case against Uribe changes its course. If it remains for law 600, jurists assure that everything that the Court has already done, the evidence it assessed, could be taken into account and move forward to evaluate whether or not it is called to trial.
(You may be interested in: Uribe case remained in the hands of Judge Gerson Chaverra)
Instead, If the process is passed to Law 906, everything acted upon by the Court, say the jurists, would fall apart and therefore the Prosecutor’s Office would have to start from scratch to evaluate whether or not to charge the former president, despite the fact that the high court had already advanced in that stage and had already ordered its security measure.
Thus, the Plenary Chamber will have to evaluate the presentation presented by the Criminal Chamber magistrate Gerson Chaverra, who was assigned by lottery to evaluate which path to follow.
JUSTICE
Twitter: @JusticiaET
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