(Reuters)
BOGOTA, Aug 1- Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was sentenced by a judge on Friday to 12 years of house arrest for abuse of process and bribery of a public official, in a long-running case over connections to former right-wing paramilitaries.
Uribe was convicted of the two charges on Monday by Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia in a witness-tampering case that has run for about 13 years. He has always maintained his innocence.
Heredia read the sentence to the court in an afternoon hearing on Friday. Uribe will be fined $578,000, Heredia’s ruling said, and barred from public office for more than eight years.
Uribe, whose legal team has said it will appeal, is to report to authorities in Rionegro, in Antioquia province, where he resides, and then “proceed immediately to his residence where he will comply with house arrest,” the ruling said.
The conviction made Uribe the country’s first ex-president to ever be found guilty at trial and came less than a year before Colombia’s 2026 presidential election, in which several of Uribe’s allies and proteges are competing for top office.
It could also have implications for Colombia’s relationship with the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that Uribe’s conviction was a “weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges” and analysts have said there could be cuts to U.S. aid in response.
Uribe, 73, and his supporters have always said the process is a persecution, while his detractors have celebrated it as deserved comeuppance for a man who has been accused for decades of close ties with violent right-wing paramilitaries but never convicted of any crime until now.
“In my condition as a convict, because of this ruling, I request very respectfully before you an appeal,” Uribe said during the hearing, where he and his lawyers appeared virtually, adding his legal team will formally appeal in writing to overturn the convictions in their entirety.
