Ongoing Legal Process Against Uribe an Important Advance for Justice and Accountability in Colombia

Washington, D.C.—In response to news that Colombia’s Supreme Court ordered that former president Álvaro Uribe be held under house arrest, in connection to allegations of witness tampering, WOLA Director for the Andes Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli issued the following quote:

“Uribe has always been one degree of separation from crimes against humanity and unaccountable, authoritarian behavior. Despite massive circumstantial evidence, others have always taken the fall for the DAS intel scandal, the parapolitics scandal, links to paramilitaries on the U.S. terrorism list, false positive killings, paramilitary massacres, and violence against Afro-Colombian and Indigenous peoples. This case involves the ex-president’s lawyers making payoffs to ex-paramilitary witnesses, so they might alter their testimonies and falsely incriminate a political adversary. We hope that it begins the process of peeling off Álvaro Uribe’s Teflon vest so that all the victims of these crimes can finally have justice.”

“This sends a strong message that no one is above the rule of law in Colombia,” said Adam Isacson, Director for Defense Oversight at WOLA. “These kinds of sensitive investigations, implicating some of Colombia’s most powerful political elites, are only advancing in the first place thanks to the courageous work of human rights defenders, journalists, justice officials, and other reformers who are fighting every day to uncover the truth of what happened during Colombia’s conflict. As the legal processes involving Uribe continue, it is critical that state officials respect and uphold the independence of Colombia’s courts and justice system.”