{"id":310988,"date":"2025-08-02T04:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T04:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/310988\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T04:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T04:09:12","slug":"colombias-ex-president-alvaro-uribe-sentenced-to-12-years-of-house-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/310988\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia&#8217;s ex-president, \u00c1lvaro Uribe, sentenced to 12 years of house arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5ykw9xq8lwo\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The former president was convicted<\/a> of two charges on Monday in a witness-tampering case that has run for around 13 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Two jailed ex-paramilitaries gave evidence saying Uribe&#8217;s former lawyer Diego Cadena had offered them money to testify in Uribe&#8217;s favour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cadena, who is also facing charges, has denied the accusations and testified, along with several other ex-paramilitaries, on Uribe&#8217;s behalf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned Uribe&#8217;s conviction, accusing Colombia&#8217;s judiciary of being weaponised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former president&#8217;s &#8220;only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland,&#8221; Rubio wrote on the social media site, X.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s with the stated goal of taking on poverty and marginalisation. They fought the Marxist-inspired guerrilla groups that had themselves battled the state two decades prior.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Many of the armed groups which developed in the standoff made an income from the cocaine trade. Deadly fighting between them and with the state has produced lasting rivalries for trafficking routes and resources.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Uribe was praised by Washington for his hard-line approach to left-wing Farc rebels \u2013 but was a divisive politician, who critics say did little to tackle the inequality and poverty in the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Farc signed a peace deal with Uribe&#8217;s successor in 2016, though violence from disarmed groups persists in Colombia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former president was convicted of two charges on Monday in a witness-tampering case that has run for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-310988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114957213037269474","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}