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The Superior Court of Bogotá indicated that the investigating body violated Cepeda’s fundamental rights to due process, access to information and access to the administration of justice. The body headed by Francisco Barbosa, says the court, refrained from responding. The testimonies have already been delivered to the congressman.
12 days after the Attorney General’s Office asks a judge to preclude the process against Álvaro Uribe for alleged manipulation of witnesses, the Superior Court of Bogotá has just ruled on this momentous case. The Criminal Chamber of that body, in a guardianship ruling, has just agreed with Senator Iván Cepeda, who is recognized as a victim in the case. On March 11, the congressman presented a tutelage to deliver the statements that the Prosecutor’s Office has taken in the six months that it has been studying the case of the former president. At that time, six days had passed since the investigating body announced that it was going to ask a judge to preclude the Uribe case, that is, that it would request – based on those statements and other evidence – to file the process before a judge of the republic.
Also read: The evidence ordered by the prosecutor Gabriel Jaimes in the Uribe case
Other news of the Uribe case: Uribe case: has Diego Cadena visited Juan Guillermo Monsalve 44 times since 2011?
The magistrates of the Chamber determined that “in this context, the violation of the fundamental rights to due process, access to information and access to the administration of justice of Cepeda Castro as a victim is noted, since despite the fact that by virtue of of that recognized quality within the process, he requested from the Prosecutor’s Office copies of the file, especially of the interviews carried out by that office, after receiving the process from the Supreme Court of Justice, it abstained from making a pronouncement ”.
And it determined that the fundamental rights of due process, access to information and access to the administration of justice of Cepeda must be protected in his capacity as victim in the file. “Order the sixth-delegated prosecutor before the Supreme Court of Justice, that if he has not done so yet, within a term of 48 hours from the notification of this decision,” says the nine-page guardianship ruling known by this daily. Sources close to this newspaper indicated that this information has already been delivered to the defense of Congressman Cepeda.
The Superior Court of Bogotá added that: “Regarding the right to information, as a procedural guarantee, the highest body of the constitutional jurisdiction specified that it has an autonomous scope, and allows victims to receive information and access it, as required. which constitutes one of the core manifestations of its possibility of intervention in criminal proceedings. Its exercise implies, for example, the possibility of being informed of the type of organizations to which you can go or the procedure given to your complaint, but also accessing the content of the action on your own, with the sole purpose of corroborating or specifying the content of the information that it previously possessed ”.
Former President Álvaro Uribe has a formal investigation for the crimes of procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings. Specifically, at the time the Supreme Court pointed to the former president as the determiner of a plan to try to manipulate the testimony of Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a man convicted of his ties in the underworld who assured that the former president was the promoter of a paramilitary group in Antioquia. El Espectador and Blu Radio recently had access to that extensive file and the statements: Get to know some of them.
Read: “I refrain from answering”: this is how Diego Cadena declared in the Prosecutor’s Office for the Uribe case
You may also be interested: Uribe case: “Caliche” admits that he lied to Congressman Prada and to the witness Monsalve
Other testimonies: Uribe case: Congressman Hernán Prada upheld his version before the Prosecutor’s Office
The origin of the case against Uribe
At the beginning of 2012, during a debate on political control over the genesis and rise of paramilitarism in Antioquia, the then representative to the Chamber Iván Cepeda presented serious complaints related to the Guacharacas farm, which was owned by the Uribe family, located between the Antioquia municipalities. from San Roque and Yolombó. Cepeda revealed that, according to the testimonies of Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a former worker of that farm -star witness in this case-, and of a paramilitary known as Pablo Hernán Sierra, alias Alberto Guerrero placeholder image, former commander of the Bloque Cacique Pipintá de las Auc, the farm had been the headquarters of the Metro Bloc of the paramilitaries.
“The founders and creators of what was called the Metro Block are former president Ávaro Uribe Vélez, his brother Santiago Uribe, Santiago Gallón, Luis Villegas and Juan Guillermo Villegas,” revealed aliases Alberto Guerrero placeholder image to Congressman Cepeda in August 2011. In the course of the 2012 debate, he presented it as evidence of his complaints. Álvaro Uribe denied the accusations, reiterated that since 1983 he had stopped going to the hacienda, and to demonstrate his disagreement with Cepeda, on the same day of the debate he went to the Supreme Court to denounce the Polo congressman for the alleged manipulation of the versions of the ex-paramilitaries.
(Also read: The evidence against Uribe is “clear, unequivocal and conclusive”: Supreme Court)
In September 2014, when Uribe was already serving as a senator, Cepeda promoted a new debate in Congress on paramilitarism in Antioquia, and again clashed with the former president. Uribe filed a memorial in the Supreme Court to take into account several interviews conducted by a private investigator with former paramilitaries Ramiro de Jesús Henao, alias Simon and Gabriel Muñoz Ramírez, aliases Castaneda, which pointed Cepeda to make offers in exchange for testifying against Uribe. The former president and former senator, for his part, has reiterated ad nauseam that he has never committed crimes. “Freedom is an invaluable asset, but for me honor is the priority, so the emphasis on evidence,” said the former president.
The Supreme Court took six years -from the first complaint- to make a decision, and in February 2018, it was inhibited from continuing to investigate Cepeda, pointing out that in order to advance in the investigation, more evidence than existing ones was required. It also ordered that the person to be investigated for alleged witness tampering and bribery was former President Álvaro Uribe. Six days later, the high court received information from the defense of Iván Cepeda about alleged pressure on Juan Guillermo Monsalve to change his testimony, which is why the Supreme Court called him to investigate, together with the representative to the Chamber for Huila, Álvaro Hernán Prada, who also participated in the pressures.
