Colombian court sentences Alvaro Uribe’s brother to 28 years in prison

Santiago Uribe, the brother of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, was given a 28-year prison sentence and three-month prison term for aggravated homicide and conspiracy to commit a crime while leading a paramilitary group.

A three-judge panel in Antioquia’s northwestern province on Tuesday declared that Uribe “formed and led an illegal armed group” in the wake of the verdict.

Under Uribe’s leadership, the organization allegedly carried out a “plan to systematic murder and extermination people who were unfavorable.”

Uribe has denied having any connections to paramilitary organizations. His team of attorneys intends to file an appeal.

The lower court was cleared last year, but the decision was overturned. The Supreme Court of Colombia will now decide the case in its entirety.

The Uribe family’s alleged paramilitary ties are the latest twist in a long-running criminal investigation.

During Colombia’s six-decade-long internal conflict, critics have accused Uribe and his brother, the former president, of maintaining ties to organizations that committed grave human rights violations.

Activities that occurred on and around the La Carolina cattle ranch owned by the Uribe family in Antioquia were the subject of Tuesday’s conviction.

The 12 Apostles, a far-right paramilitary group formed by ranchers in the early 1990s to combat leftist rebels, specifically the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), were well-known in their 307-page ruling.

The 12 Apostles, which the court called a “death squad,” killed “undesirables” including sex workers, drug users, people with mental illnesses, and suspected leftist sympathisers, according to the court’s description of The 12 Apostles as a “death squad.”

According to the ruling, the paramilitary group held meetings at La Carolina as well as training and distribution of weapons on-site.

According to the judges, those were “acts that led to crimes against humanity.”

The court found Uribe responsible for ordering the murder of Camilo Barrientos, a bus driver who was fatally shot near La Carolina in 1994 for being a suspected rebel collaborator, and describing him as the leader of The 12 Apostles.

The militia “enjoyed the cooperation of agents of the State, both through action and inaction,” according to the ruling on Tuesday.

In the late 1990s, Uribe was first questioned about his involvement with The 12 Apostles, but the investigation was canceled in 1999 because there was no conclusive proof.

In 2010, Colombian authorities detained Uribe on suspicion of homicide, and they opened an investigation in 2016.

The lower court’s decision was announced years later, in November 2024, despite the trial’s conclusion coming out in 2020. Jaime Herrera Nino, the judge who was in charge of the case at the time, ruled that there was insufficient evidence and acquitted Uribe.

That conclusion is overturned by Tuesday’s decision. Even at the highest levels of power, human rights advocates applauded the ruling as a step toward accountability.

The sentence is very significant, according to Laura Bonilla, a Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares) deputy director in Colombia. It illustrates the extent of paramilitarism’s influence on Colombian society.

The complexity of the case, according to Gerson Arias, a conflict and security investigator at the Colombian think tank Ideas for Peace, reflects the various power structures involved.

He claimed that because paramilitarism was deeply rooted in society’s upper echelons, it would take years to fully understand what transpired.

Therefore, it is likely that many of our collective paramilitarism-related knowledge is still awaiting clarification and discovery.

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, the defendant’s brother, served there from 2002 to 2010.

The former president was found guilty earlier this year of paying former paramilitary officers to cover up his involvement with them.

Following a court’s ruling in October, the court overturned the evidence’s finding that it had been gathered through an unlawful wiretap. In the prosecution’s arguments, it also cited “structural deficiencies.”

In Colombia, the former president has pledged to form a coalition to oppose a left-wing government in the 2026 elections. He continues to be a powerful figure in right-wing politics.

Source: Aljazeera