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On September 17, 2014, the deputy Iván Cepeda promoted a debate on paramilitarism in Antioquia and leaked the testimonies of two ex-combatants who had laid charges against the former president Álvaro Uribe. The same day, Uribe went to court and denounced Cepeda for abuse of public office, procedural fraud and defamation. Four years later, the Court refrained from investigating Cepeda and ordered him to do so against Uribe for manipulating witnesses. Last Tuesday, the case ended with a summons to question the former president in the midst of a huge political and judicial upheaval.
To understand this trick, it must be clear that there are two files. The man who was born on February 16 against Uribe for falsifying witnesses is under way. But six days after it was formalized, the fact that originated the second one is produced. The lawyer Reinaldo Villalba, who seizes Iván Cepeda, went to court to warn that one of the witnesses against Uribe, Juan Guillermo Monsalve, was receiving messages and visits from people to change his testimony. C In this alert, the Supreme Court requested the ICT support of the Office of the Prosecutor to investigate what happened
(This may interest you: The Respondents in the Uribe case)
According to the Court, this investigation allowed to establish at least two ways of approach to the witness. Through the Congress of the Democratic Center for Huila Álvaro Hernán Prada Artunduaga and through the intermediary of the lawyer Diego Javier Cadena Ramírez. The latter asked Witness Monsalve for a retraction to present him to the Court and proposed an action for review without requiring costs and management to improve his conditions of detention and security. The witness refused and argued that he could not commit a crime of false testimony. Today, it is clear that he was recording the meeting.
While MP Prada was trying to reach the witness or Cadena was trying to convince him to retract, the same lawyer turned to another resource. He contacted the ex-prosecutor, Hilda Jeaneth Niño, in the El Buen Pastor prison, now judged to have favored the paramilitaries, to pledge to testify at Santiago Uribe's trial that senior officials Prosecutors had conspired to charge him with links to paramilitarism. According to the court, the prosecutor agreed, but in return asked that, with the support of a guardianship, the cavalry school be established as its new prison site
(You might be interested: The key conversations for the investigation that is advanced against Álvaro Uribe)
In addition to the ways of the deputy Prada or Cadena lawyer, l a court pointed out that, personally and directly, the former president tried to contact people abroad so that paramilitary extradited Juan Carlos Sierra Ramírez aka Tuso Sierra, made a video declaring in his favor. Apparently, the same strategy was developed to discredit the former Juan Carlos Meneses, who is today the main witness in the investigation against Santiago Uribe. Other ex-paramilitary members were contacted for the same purpose
Essentially, it is the argument of the Court. However, since the scandal broke out, procedural documents, handwritten documents or testimonials that add new points of view have emerged. For example, the ex-consulate Hilda Niño made a statement last May, in which stated that during his tenure he had found pressure, illegal follow-ups and threats from prosecutors during the administration of Eduardo Montealegre ] Witnesses or beneficiaries of the Law Justice and Peace, to testify against the brothers Uribe Vélez
(Read here: Ni Lombana nor I met the Monsalve witness: Maria Mercedes Williamson)
Other Enrique Pardo Hasche is the protagonist, prosecuted for the abduction of businessman Eduardo Puyana, father-in-law of former President Andrés Pastrana. This character turned out to be a cell mate of the witness Monsalve and, thanks to his intervention, it was possible for the lawyer Diego Cadena to join it. However, in a letter sent to the Supreme Court Pardo says that he knows Monsalve since 2009, that he always blamed Uribe for not having accepted it at Justicia y Paz, and that he repeatedly verified that Monsalve wanted to retract
In the same letter, Pardo added that, at Monsalve's insistence that he wanted to contact the Uribe family, he did made the direction and in La Picota the lawyer Diego Cadena and the witness Monsalve met. In this meeting, says Pardo, Monsalve insisted on the benefits and Cadena in the retraction. A few days later, he learned that Monsalve had been transferred to the tax houses of La Picota. In the letter, Pardo adds that the former paramilitaries Daniel Rendón Herrera, aka Don Mario and José Gélvez Albarracín, alias El Canoso, wanted to fish in troubled waters to attempt to delay his extradition
(You may be interested: "I am a potential victim of this assembly": lawyer Jaime Lombana)
By Pardo, the same day of the meeting between the lawyer Cadena and the witness Monsalve, they entered the lawyers of Picota Jaime Lombana and Maria Mercedes Williamson. But they are not sitting at the same table or have no contact with Monsalve. Lawyer Williamson explained to this newspaper that she went to jail because she is Pardo's sister-in-law, whom she has been visiting for years and that On this occasion she did it with the requirements of the law . She and Lombana's lawyer, who accompanied her because she's a friend of her family, declared themselves victims of a "rude assembly" to engage them in the scandal.
The truth is that, in the subpoena to question Uribe, the Court ordered to receive the testimony of Pardo, the lawyers Diego Cadena, Jaime Lombana, Hector Romero and Maria Mercedes Williamson. The same thing that decided to listen to all the environment surrounding the management of the Congressman Álvaro Hernán Prada, starting with the politician Huila Hugo Tovar Marroquín and the breeder of the same department Rodrigo Vidal Perdomo. Similarly, Victoria Jaramillo must leave, who says he learned that Juan Guillermo Monsalve wanted to retract and intervene so that Uribe could be the beneficiary.
(You might be interested: The letter that sent Duque witness against Uribe)
To all this framework, the Court decided to also add to the circle surrounding the other witness who points in Uribe: the former commander of the Cacique Pipintá block of Sierra Pablo Hernán self-defense, aka Alberto Guerrero. In addition to this character, the lawyer Samuel Sánchez – who was also the advocate of paramilitary leader aka Ernesto Báez – will be heard; Carlos Enrique Vélez, known as Comandante Víctor in Cacique Pipintá Eurydice Cortés, political commissioner of the self-defense groups in Caldas, and another group of characters from the same paramilitary war scene.
Although Senator Uribe said that he was going to resign, he has not yet resigned. However, in political circles, it is said that the former president wants to insist on this point to demonstrate that he submits to justice rather than legislating, unlike the recently arrived Farc Congress members. In another circle, his announced resignation is interpreted as a means of reporting to the Office of the Prosecutor, irrespective of the Court. The Last Word Regarding the Jurisdiction to Prosecute Is Still in the Hands of the Court
(In the Context: In Secret and With Interceptions, It Is So That the Supreme Court Investigated Senator Uribe )
deduced from the list of persons named to testify, it is obvious that opponents of Uribe will also remain active in the investigation. This is the case of Iván Velásquez, former magistrate and paramilitary of the Supreme Court, Piedad Córdoba, former Congressman, and Senator Iván Cepeda. Several human rights attorneys and former magistrates also attend this judicial crossroads. Whatever the outcome of the Uribe case, added at the end of his brother Santiago's trial, come days of crucial definitions.
Meanwhile, in the environment of the Court, there is intense controversy that includes magistrates Barceló, Fernando Castro and Luis Antonio Hernández, who have promoted the summons of Uribe to the investigation, but also added auxiliary magistrates responsible for investigations and even lawyers from other hearing rooms. Judge Barceló has only a few months to complete his term, although between 1994 and 2011 he was assistant to the same magistrate. He is said to be determined to resolve the case before spending his time in the High Court
(Read here: Subsequent Debate on the Future of the Investigation Against Álvaro Uribe) [19659022]
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