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BOGOTA: Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe will learn his fate Monday in a witness tampering case that saw him become the South American country’s first-ever former head of state to be put on trial.

The 73-year-old, who was president from 2002 to 2010, is charged with “bribery of witnesses” in a separate investigation against him, and risks a 12-year prison sentence in the highly politicized case.

The matter dates to 2012, when Uribe accused leftist senator Ivan Cepeda before the Supreme Court of hatching a plot to falsely link him to right-wing paramilitary groups involved in Colombia’s long-standing armed conflict.

The court decided against prosecuting Cepeda and turned its sights on his claims against Uribe instead.

Paramilitary groups emerged in the 1980s in Colombia to fight Marxist guerrillas that had taken up arms against the state two decades earlier with the stated goal of combating poverty and political marginalization, especially in rural areas.

The plethora of armed groups adopted cocaine as their main source of income, the genesis of a rivalry for resources and trafficking that continues to pit them against each other and the state.

Uribe was a politician on the right of the political spectrum – like all Colombian presidents before current leader Gustavo Petro, who unseated Uribe’s Centro Democratico party in 2022 elections.

Uribe on Sunday gave an hourlong speech in his native Medellin in which he criticized the left-leaning Petro administration.

“We need an enormous victory in the coming year,” Uribe said, in reference to presidential elections that will be held in 2026.

During his tenure, Uribe led a relentless military campaign against drug cartels and the FARC guerrilla army that signed a peace deal with his successor Juan Manuel Santos in 2016.

After Cepeda accused him of having had ties to paramilitary groups responsible for human rights violations, Uribe is alleged to have contacted jailed ex-fighters to lie for him.

He claims he only wanted to convince them to tell the truth.

In 2019, thousands protested in Bogota and Medellin when Uribe – who remains a prominent voice on the right – was indicted in the case.

More than 90 witnesses testified in his trial, which opened in May 2024.

The investigation against Uribe began in 2018 and has had numerous twists and turns, with several attorneys general seeking to close the case.

It gained new impetus under Attorney General Luz Camargo, picked by Petro – himself a former guerrilla and a political arch-foe of Uribe.

Prosecutors claim to have evidence from at least one paramilitary ex-fighter who claims to have been contacted by Uribe to change his story.

The former president is also under investigation in other matters.

He has testified before prosecutors in a preliminary probe into a 1997 paramilitary massacre of small-scale farmers when he was governor of the western Antioquia department.

A complaint has also been filed against him in Argentina, where universal jurisdiction allows for the prosecution of crimes committed anywhere in the world.

That complaint stems from Uribe’s alleged involvement in the more than 6,000 executions and forced disappearances of civilians by the military when he was president.

Uribe insists his trial is a product of “political vengeance.”

BEIJING: A landslide triggered by unusually heavy rain killed four people and left eight others missing in northern China’s Hebei province, state media said on Monday, as downpours force thousands to evacuate.

The landslide in a village near Chengde City was “due to heavy rainfall,” state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The national emergency management department said it dispatched a team to inspect the “severe” flooding in Hebei, which encircles the capital Beijing.

Swathes of northern China have been inundated in recent days, with record rain in Hebei killing two people on Saturday, state media said.

In Fuping County, more than 4,600 people were evacuated over the weekend, it said.

And in neighboring Shanxi province, one person was rescued and 13 were missing after a bus accident, CCTV reported.

Footage from the broadcaster showed roads in Shanxi and a crop field submerged in rushing water on Sunday.

In Beijing, more than 3,000 people in suburban Miyun district were evacuated due to torrential rains.

The area’s reservoir “recorded its largest inflow flood” since it was built more than six decades ago, state media reported.

On Monday in Mujiayu, a town just south of the reservoir, AFP journalists saw power lines swept away by muddy currents while military vehicles and ambulances plowed through flooded roads.

A river had burst its banks, sweeping away trees, while fields of crops were inundated with flood water.

Authorities in the capital issued the country’s second-highest warning for rainstorms and the highest for floods, state news agency Xinhua said.

The downpours are expected to last until Tuesday morning.

Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heatwaves.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say drive climate change and contribute to making extreme weather more frequent and intense.

But it is also a global renewable energy powerhouse that aims to make its massive economy carbon-neutral by 2060.

Flash floods in eastern China’s Shandong province killed two people and left 10 missing this month.

A landslide on a highway in Sichuan province this month also killed five people after it swept several cars down a mountainside.