Álvaro Uribe has achieved a resounding victory over senator and presidential candidate Iván Cepeda. The Bogotá Superior Court has acquitted him of the three charges for which he was sentenced last August to 12 years in prison. The trial, which lasted almost fifteen years, had a clear political tinge from the start.

The sentence, read this Tuesday, has estimated that there is no documentary, testimonial or technical evidence to convict the former president of procedural fraud and bribery in criminal proceedings.

The judges began by rejecting the star witness, Juan Guillermo Monsalve, a kidnapper sentenced to 40 years in prison and the prosecution's main asset, considering him to be unreliable.

Even more critical were the three judges of the Criminal Chamber of the Court, with Judge Sandra Heredia, who issued the conviction in the first instance, for acting in a biased manner.

"He did not produce any evidence to corroborate" the story of the man who identified the leader of the Democratic Center as the founder of the Metro Bloc of the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), contrary to the claims of his father and brother, who worked for the Uribe family and have always denied it.

The inmate, who receives privileged treatment at Bogotá's La Picota prison, had also claimed that Uribe tried to get him to change his story regarding his alleged ties to the AUC in exchange for money and judicial benefits.

"The court notes that the first instance ruling failed to critically assess essential aspects of Juan Guillermo Monsalve's testimony," reads a section of the ruling.

They issued similar statements regarding both Monsalve's ex-wife, Deyanira Gómez, a doctor and former FARC guerrilla, exiled abroad through Cepeda's mediation, and Carlos Enríquez Vélez, alias Víctor, a former paramilitary whom the Court also ordered to be investigated for his many contradictions.

The ruling also represents a severe setback for Justice Minister Eduardo Montealegre, who was considered Uribe's"victim." A former Attorney General and former Constitutional Court judge, he is a fierce critic of the former president and has acted as a sort of spokesperson for the prosecution throughout the proceedings. Along with him, and in the same capacity, they included Jorge Fernando Perdomo, who was his deputy prosecutor and, later, his successor as head of the Prosecutor's Office.

Political weapon of candidate Cepeda

The process began in September 2014 when Uribe sued Iván Cepeda, then senator for the socialist Democratic Pole, for alleged witness tampering. He claimed that his opponent had toured prisons in Colombia and the United States to convince former members of the AUC to accuse him of being a paramilitary. Cepeda, who has dedicated a good part of his political activity to judicially persecuting Uribe, obtained his first victory in 2018.

Although the case file had been dormant, undisturbed, that year the Supreme Court decided to awaken it and shake things up. Instead of investigating Cepeda, it opened proceedings against his defendant. When the aforementioned Court imposed a restraining order on Uribe in 2020, the then Democratic Center senator resigned his seat so his case could be passed on to the Prosecutor's Office. As time passed, and on two occasions, the prosecutors in charge of the case requested acquittal due to lack of evidence. But the judges ruled against the request and ultimately called him to trial.

Since then, it has become a political weapon for Cepeda and leftist parties and movements, including Gustavo Petro, against the leader of the conservative Democratic Center. Hence, they celebrated his conviction with great fanfare, and the senator, who aims to become the new president to continue the work of the Petro administration, took the opportunity to launch his candidacy that same week.

Next Sunday, Cepeda will challenge Carolina Corchó, a doctor and former Minister of Health, in the far-left primaries, and it is unclear how the acquittal of his bitter enemy will affect his candidacy.

They are expected to file an appeal with the Supreme Court in the coming days, which will have five years to rule on it. Meanwhile, Álvaro Uribe will be number twenty-fifth on the Democratic Center's Senate ticket and will intensify his electoral campaign across the country.

"It's important to us because the acquittal confirms that this is a case of lawfare, that the justice system was politicized, and that the judge's ideological positions prevailed," Paola Holguín, senator and presidential candidate for the Democratic Center, told EL MUNDO."It dismantles everything that was presented in the trial, and it became clear that Iván Cepeda was the one who went to the prisons to gather testimony against Uribe and his brother Santiago. The ruling will affect his electoral campaign because he based it on claiming that he was the one who put Uribe in jail."