Two magistrates of Colombia’s Supreme Court said Sunday that Senator Alvaro Uribe is using slander to discredit their investigation into the former president’s alleged witness tampering.
In an interview with television network Caracol, chief Supreme Court justice Jose Luis Barcelo and the penal chamber’s chief magistrate Luis Antonio Hernandez accused Uribe of trying to politicize the criminal investigation against him.
Why Colombia’s former president is accused of forming bloodthirsty death squads
According to Barcelo, “we are victim of a media trial” in which “they want to publicly lynch us.”
The Supreme Court justice said that Uribe “uses lies” and “put words in our mouths that are not true.”
How is it possible that about me they say — and if I’m correct it was Senator Uribe and other people — that I in I don’t know what place drunkenly said we were going to arrest Senator Uribe. This is false, a lie.
Supreme Court chief justice Jose Luis Barcelo
The Supreme Court is investigating the former president over the alleged intimidation of witnesses who have testified about the Uribe family’s alleged role in the formation of paramilitary death squads in the 1990s.
Multiple other witnesses who could tie Uribe to the now-defunct Medellin Cartel and the now-defunct AUC paramilitary organization have been assassinated.
Uribe’s cartel years
Hernandez said that Uribe is using his defense attorneys, allied columnists and his large audience on Twitter to disseminate lies about the court to mainstream media.
Prominent lawyers make their cases in public. We know that their fees include media management and you can see it in how they attack us in the press. I don’t blame the media, but there are opinion leaders and columnists who attack the credibility of the Court. In addition, there is no tweet of former president Uribe , many of which related to the case that the Court is considering, that isn’t echoed in the media.
Supreme Court justice Luis Antonio Hernandez
Uribe, who has been accused of ties to organized crime and paramilitary groups since he rose to prominence in his native Antioquia province in the 1980s, has often claimed he and his criminal and allegedly criminal allies were the victims of political persecution or criminal conspiracies.
