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BOGOTA: Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was convicted of witness tampering and bribery Monday in a historic trial that gripped the South American nation and threatened to tarnish the conservative strongman’s legacy.
The ruling followed a nearly six-month trial in which prosecutors presented evidence that Uribe attempted to influence witnesses who accused the law-and-order leader of having links to a paramilitary group founded by ranchers in the 1990s.
Uribe, 73, was not in court in the capital, Bogota, for the verdict as the judge has so far not ordered his arrest. He followed the ruling from his home outside Medellin but did not immediately speak about it.
Uribe faces up to 12 years in prison but a sentencing will be delivered in a separate hearing. He is expected to appeal the ruling.
The former president, who governed from 2002 to 2010 with strong support from the United States, is a polarizing figure in Colombia, where many credit him for saving the country from becoming a failed state, while others associate him with human rights violations and the rise of paramilitary groups in the 1990s.
While the ruling was read, Uribe’s opponents clashed briefly with his supporters outside the courthouse.
In a ruling that lasted more than 10 hours, Judge Sandra Heredia said there was enough evidence to determine that Uribe conspired with a lawyer to coax three former members of paramilitary groups who were in prison into changing testimony they had provided to Ivan Cepeda, a left-wing senator who had launched an investigation into Uribe’s alleged ties to a paramilitary group.
The case dates to 2012, when Uribe filed a libel suit against Cepeda with the Supreme Court. But in a twist, the high court dismissed the charges against Cepeda and began investigating Uribe in 2018.
During Uribe’s presidency, Colombia’s military attained some of its biggest battlefield victories against Latin America’s oldest leftist insurgency, pushing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia into remote pockets and forcing the group’s leadership into peace talks that led to the disarmament of more than 13,000 fighters in 2016.
Known for his tireless work ethic and short temper, Uribe still has legions of followers in Colombia and is one of the fiercest opponents of the current president, former leftist guerrilla Gustavo Petro.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted to the ruling, as it became evident that Judge Heredia was going to find the former president guilty of bribery.
“Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland” Rubio wrote on Monday on X. “The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro defended the ruling, writing on X that “a strong justice system” will enable Colombia to emerge from violence. He added in another message that Rubio was interfering with Colombia’s sovereignty.
“The world must respect the judges of Colombia” Petro wrote.
Heredia said that her ruling should not be interpreted as “a victory for anyone” but as “an act of justice.”
Critics also blame Uribe for state crimes. According to a truth commission created in 2017, more than 6,400 civilians were executed by the Colombian military and identified as members of rebel groups by soldiers seeking promotions during the conflict, in a phenomenon that peaked during the Uribe administration.
Prosecutors accused Uribe of sending lawyers to meet with imprisoned former paramilitary henchmen and pressure them to drop testimony that they had provided to Senator Cepeda.
During the trial, Uribe denied trying to flip witnesses but acknowledged seeking interviews with the men as part of his preparation for trial and to verify testimonies that were also being used in a murder trial against his brother, Santiago Uribe, who was also accused of ties to the armed paramilitaries.
Cepeda spoke to journalists after the ruling, and said that he would continue to fight for “truth and justice” for victims of Colombia’s conflict. “No one can defy and taint the rule of law,” he said.

BALMEDIE: President Donald Trump is opening a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family's luxury properties and playing golf.
Trump and his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., are cutting the ceremonial ribbon and playing the first-ever round at the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie, on the northern coast of Scotland.
The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity and the still-raging scandal over the files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
It was mostly built around golf — and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on Aug. 13, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand.
Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event this week, after Trump leaves. Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers onto the correct road.
Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump's arrival.
Also from Scotland's north is the president's late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born on the Isle of Lewis, immigrated to New York and died in 2000 at age 88.
“My mother loved Scotland,” Trump said during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday at another one of his golf courses, Turnberry, on Scotland's southern coast. “It's different when your mother was born here.”
Trump used his trip to meet with Starmer and reach a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union’s 27 member countries — though scores of key details remain to be hammered out. But the trip has featured a lot of golf, and having the president visit is sure to raise the new course's profile.
Trump’s assets are in a trust, and his sons are running the family business while he’s in the White House. Any business generated at the course will ultimately enrich the president when he leaves office, though.
Visible from various parts of the new course were towering windmills lining the coast — some with blades that showed visible dots of rust. They are part of a nearby windfarm that Trump sued to block construction of in 2013.
He lost that case and was eventually ordered to pay legal costs for bringing it — and the issue still enrages him. During the meeting with Starmer, Trump called windmills “ugly monsters” and suggested they were part of “the most expensive form of energy.”
“I restricted windmills in the United States because they also kill all your birds,” Trump said. “If you shoot a bald eagle in the United States, they put you in jail for five years. And windmills knock out hundreds of them. They don’t do anything. Explain that.”
Starmer said in the U.K, “we believe in a mix” of energy, including oil and gas and renewables.
The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.
Trump golfed at Turnberry on Saturday as protesters took to the streets, and on Sunday. He invited Starmer, who famously doesn’t golf, aboard Air Force One so the prime minister could get a private tour of his Aberdeen properties before Tuesday’s ceremonial opening.
“Even if you play badly, it’s still good,” Trump said of golfing on his course over the weekend. “If you had a bad day on the golf course, it’s OK. It’s better than other days.”
Trump also found time to to praise Turnberry's renovated ballroom, which he said he'd paid lavishly to upgrade — even suggesting that he might install one like it at the White House.
“I could take this one, drop it right down there," Trump joked. “And it would be beautiful.”