Nearly three months after being sentenced to 12 years of house arrest, a Bogotá appeals court has overturned former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s conviction for bribery and procedural fraud.
Prosecutors on Tuesday said they would look to challenge the ruling before the Supreme Court.
Uribe led Colombia from 2002 to 2010 and is arguably the most prominent figure in modern Colombian politics. A close ally of the United States, especially during the George W. Bush administration, Uribe has been accused of links to Colombian drug traffickers, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel.
On July 28, Uribe became the country’s first former president to be criminally convicted when Judge Sandra Heredia Aranda said that it was “proven” that Uribe and his legal team had attempted to bribe witnesses in a separate case accusing him of links to right-wing paramilitary death squads.
At the time, Uribe’s legal team promised, “This is not the end of this process, the appeal is next and we are going to demonstrate that this decision, which we respect, is wrong.”
On Tuesday, Judge Manuel Merchán, one of the appellate court judges, criticized Judge Heredia’s handling of the evidence that led to the initial conviction, arguing that her decision “introduces facts unrelated to the prosecution’s case, violating the principle of consistency and right to defense.”
The ruling is another major development in an already polarizing and drawn-out case that has gripped Colombia’s public for over a decade.
It also comes ahead of 2026 elections, where a number of Uribe loyalists will attempt to swing Colombia back to the right after having voted for their first leftist president, Gustavo Petro, in 2022.
A timeline of the case against Uribe
While it is most likely not over, the trial against Uribe has proceeded for well over a decade.
The scandal began in 2012, when left-wing Senator Iván Cepeda publicly accused Uribe and his brother Santiago of creating the Bloque Metro (Metro Bloc) of right-wing paramilitaries — an armed group the U.S. classified as a terrorist organization.
Uribe responded by accusing Senator Cepeda of libel, prompting the Supreme Court to open an investigation into Cepeda. However, in 2018, the Court dropped that investigation and opened a new one against Uribe – then a sitting senator – for allegedly tampering with witnesses set to testify in Cepeda’s favor. A witness related to the case, former paramilitary commander Carlos Enrique Areiza Arango, was shot and killed in 2018.
During the trial, ex-paramilitary Juan Guillermo Monsalve provided a secret video recording of Uribe’s lawyer pressuring him to testify in the former president’s favor. And the court obtained recordings of Uribe and his lawyer, Diego Cadena, talking about influencing witness testimony.
These recordings would prove controversial.
It emerged later that the wiretaps of conversations with Uribe and his lawyer were erroneously ordered by the Supreme Court and were meant to tap the calls of Nilton Córdoba Manyoma, a congressman embroiled in the Cartel de la Toga corruption scandal. At the time, Judge Heredia upheld the legality of the recordings, noting they were obtained accidentally during another investigation and later authorized through proper legal channels.
However, on Tuesday, in the explanation for overturning the case, the appeals court said that some of the recordings were made illegally. “Interception converts the information obtained into illicit evidence, nonexistent due to nullity by operation of law,” Judge Merchán said, according to El Pais.
The appeals court also ruled that Monsalve’s testimony and that of other former paramilitaries lacked credibility and that the lower court failed to prove that Uribe’s legal team bribed Euridice Cortes, the former political head of Colombia’s AUC paramilitary umbrella group.
Lastly, the court ruled that Uribe wasn’t responsible for false testimonies that originally supported criminal charges against Senator Cepeda, which ended up initiating the investigation into Uribe in the first place.
While Cepeda’s legal team said they would challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court, Uribe’s allies rejoiced in the ruling.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X, “Colombia’s justice has prevailed as former President Uribe is absolved after years of the political witch hunt against him and his family.”
Far right influencer and former journalist, Vicky Davila, wrote, “Thank God, justice has recognized your innocence and restored your honor, you know.”
Speaking from his farm in Colombia after the ruling late Tuesday, Uribe said: “The only thing that I can say is that I have told the truth throughout this long public life.”
For his part, Cepeda said that his long fight against corruption and impunity has prepared him for setbacks like this one. “I think it is a passing, momentary situation,” he said in a video on X. “The victims are more persevering than injustice and impunity.”