Iván Cepeda, as expected, rejected the decision that acquitted former President Álvaro Uribe and asserted that the battle is far from over."Contrary to any illusions on the part of Álvaro Uribe's defense team or Álvaro Uribe himself that this legal dispute ends here, we are prepared to continue this path. We will continue to pursue our legal and judicial action," said the senator and presidential candidate at a press conference.
The coincidence of the decision in favor of the former president and this Sunday's elections, in which Cepeda is vying to be the Petrista candidate against Carolina Corcho, demonstrates the political charge that this judicial process has had for years.
Cepeda goes to the polls with the Uribe case as one of his credentials, and what a few weeks ago worked in his favor—having led to a criminal conviction of the former president of Democratic Security—could work against him today. The arguments of the Bogotá Superior Court that showed the irregularities in the process were overwhelming.
Although as a senator and political leader, Cepeda has worked for victims for years and has played a relevant role in different peace processes, it is the case against the former president that has given him national prominence.
In fact, the political leader launched his presidential campaign after the former president's conviction in the first instance. This is the case he has been pursuing for almost 13 years and which, paradoxically, began like a boomerang when, during a debate in Congress, the former president decided to file a complaint against him before the Supreme Court.
The high court, as is known, dismissed the investigation into Cepeda's witness tampering and opened criminal proceedings against the former president on the same matter.
Since Judge Sandra Heredia sentenced Uribe, Cepeda began to explain that many were urging him to run for president. And he finally did: “I am making this decision in obedience to the collective will. I do not understand politics as the mere exercise of personal aspirations, but rather as a commitment to just causes and the mandate of the people. From the beginning of this electoral campaign, I made it clear that it was not my intention to run for president. However, today I am taking this step after listening carefully and with an open mind to requests that are difficult—I would say impossible—for me to ignore,” he said in his speech in which he entered the fray.
At that time, SEMANA revealed on its front page that the main promoter of his candidacy was President Gustavo Petro.
The president has repeatedly praised Cepeda's role in the case against the former president."Iván Cepeda's father was murdered when he was a senator of the Republic for the UP party, and he was also my friend and colleague. It's not out of revenge that he, as a victim, has been a driving force behind the case against Uribe; he has been a driving force behind the truth," he wrote in a tweet in July, when the case was at its most heated.
Iván Cepeda's father was murdered when he was a senator for the UP party, and he was also my friend and colleague. It's not out of revenge that he, as a victim, has been a driving force behind the Uribe case; he has been a driving force behind the truth.
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) July 29, 2025
As SEMANA recalled on its cover, the president was a friend of his father, Manuel Cepeda Vargas, who presided over the Communist Party and was assassinated in the 1990s during the extermination of the Patriotic Union (UP). His mother, Yira Castro, was also active in politics and formed the foundations of the Communist Party before dying of natural causes at just 38 years old.
The murder of his father on August 9, 1994, was one of the topics Cepeda discussed during the years of hearings in the case against Álvaro Uribe.
In his testimony to the Supreme Court, before the former president waived his immunity and the case was transferred to the ordinary courts, Cepeda said that during one of the controversial visits he made to prisons in the United States, which Piedad Córdoba also attended, “Diego Murillo (alias Don Berna) confessed to me who the masterminds behind my father’s murder might be.”
The trial against Álvaro Uribe has perhaps been the most significant judicial case in the country. But it has also had the greatest political impact.
Criminal lawyer Jaime Lombana, in an interview with María Isabel Rueda a few months ago, said it bluntly. There, he asserted that"it's no coincidence that all these events occurred right before an election, and that all these events always coincide with electoral issues. So, there's a well-thought-out, intelligent, structured plan here; it's not an improvised plan to attack a person who is precisely his political adversary, his political opponent, and the opponent of a group of people who needed to undermine him in order to gain power in Colombia. That's exactly what happened. I do believe that Uribe's trial had a lot to do with Gustavo Petro becoming president of the Republic today."
Uribe used to say something similar: "Watch out for 2026." The former president has framed his criminal case "within the emerging neo-communist gag order" that seeks to seize power in next year's elections. And he has accused the FARC of being behind Cepeda.
"This political landscape has very important consequences from this moment forward," said former Supreme Court President Jaime Arrubla on SEMANA's El Debate program. The former judge explained that the senator's campaign with the convicted former president was one thing, and his innocence, declared by the court, was quite another.
Álvaro Uribe's acquittal takes away Cepeda's stumbling block in the final stretch of the campaign for this referendum, just five days before the vote. The senator has suffered a blow, and it is unclear whether his speech regarding the ruling, in which he is one of the losers, will resonate with those who will vote on Sunday in his battle against former minister Carolina Corcho.
"It's an unfair decision; rather, defeat is when one throws in the towel, and that's not going to happen. I've been fighting for justice for more than 30 years; the victims are more persistent than the impunity," declared the senator and pre-candidate.
