In the decision that acquitted Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the most resounding section in favor of the former president was the one related to Juan Guillermo Monsalve. For years, the man—convicted of kidnapping— was presented as
However, the Bogotá Superior Court concluded that the decision sentencing the former president to 12 years included serious legal errors in the way his testimony was considered and the weight given to it. The decision contains very harsh reflections on the way the trial judge, Sandra Liliana Heredia, handled the case. Álvaro Uribe Vélez Ruling by Info-Semana
The judges analyzed Juan Guillermo Monsalve's testimony to determine whether Uribe Vélez had used "Diego Javier Cadena Ramírez and Enrique Pardo Hasche as emissaries to induce him to retract his statements."
Faced with this, the court stated that it was essential to"determine whether the evidence presented at trial demonstrates—directly or indirectly—that said retraction constituted a deliberate and essential action aimed at misrepresenting the truth within a criminal proceeding."

The Court affirmed that the trial judge accepted Monsalve's account as true,"without the unavoidable argumentative exercise resulting from the evaluation of the evidence or the construction of circumstantial evidence."
"Erroneous conclusion, insofar as the status of witness, the plausibility of the account, its credibility, the repetition of the version, and the intent to suppress or distort knowledge of a criminal act constitute clearly distinguishable concepts that also require individual analysis, since the absence of one or more of them entails various implications," the ruling adds.

The Court stated that there were no grounds to believe that a teenager could have been the "trusted person" of the founders of Bloque Metro, as Monsalve portrayed himself in his testimony. And that all the paramilitary acts Monsalve claimed to witness were"incoherent" over time.
Monsalve claimed that he witnessed how Álvaro Uribe Vélez had given the order to commit a massacre, but later changed that version in other judicial proceedings. Later, he said that he did not know the former president and had only seen him twice. In another proceeding, he stated that he had never seen the former president at the Guacharacas farm.
“Under this logic, the first activity required in order to establish the configuration of the crime of bribery in criminal proceedings was the assessment of whether what Álvaro Uribe Vélez intended was for Juan Guillermo Monsalve Pineda to retract a true statement, that is, to lie or to conceal the truth, totally or partially,” the court held.
And then he added: "This is fundamental, since the false testimony that characterizes this type of bribery can only be identified by contrasting it with the truth. This confrontation, typical of the adversarial model, materializes in the trial, where the opposing versions must be subject to verification and contradiction."
The judges severely questioned the way in which the trial judge reached her conclusions.
“In this regard, the court finds that the method used to determine which version is false lacked objective and logical methodology. On several occasions, the adjudicator concluded without specifying whether it was direct evidence of the relevant fact—the false testimony—or whether circumstantial evidence was used, without breaking down its essential elements. She did not identify the indicative facts or the rules of logic used to deduce the unknown fact. Instead, she opted for an interpretation that favors the accusatory thesis, without explaining why other plausible hypotheses that supported the defensive position were ruled out.”
The court held that determining whether Monsalve was lying is not a minor, but rather an essential part of the crime for which the former president was being convicted:"Attempting to retract a false version of events does not constitute a fact of legal relevance to criminal law, hence it was essential to establish whether Juan Guillermo Monsalve Pineda had this privileged knowledge by virtue of his membership, first, in the Peasant Self-Defense Forces and, later, in the Metro Bloc."
The judges also clarified that the assistance given to witnesses does not in itself constitute a crime, and that it was important to analyze whether or not Monsalve was seeking to benefit from his testimony.
He stated that in this one can see “temporal inconsistencies, statements built on conjectures and absence of corroborative elements, which prevents it from being considered a reliable source of procedural truth.”
And he concluded, after listing the facts of the case, that the first instance judgment “does not objectively detail the path it uses to consider as true the facts with which it concludes that the evidence for the prosecution showed that Juan Guillermo Monsalve Pineda had previously made a statement that was true to what he knew and that with the activities that are now being judged and attributed to Álvaro Uribe Vélez.”
Then, he noted that he found bias in the considerations of the first instance, since the judge “ends by indicating that she believes Juan Guillermo Monsalve Pineda because he starts from that thesis that the facts on which the accusations of illicit conduct against the interests of the Uribe Vélez brothers are structured are true.”
The court stated that the ruling has an "argumentative deficit" and speaks of a "methodological error in the analysis" that led to the conclusion that Monsalve's partner, the doctor Deyanira Gómez, was untrustworthy and, "at the same time, dismissed what other relatives of Monsalve said, solely because they did not support his version."
"The ruling seems to assume that only relatives who support the witness validate their credibility, while those who don't should be considered false or of little persuasive value. This conclusion is not only epistemologically weak, but it also violates the principle of impartiality in the evaluation of evidence," he added.
The judges warned that it was "essential for the lower court to rigorously examine what evidence—documentary and testimonial—truly supports the statements of Juan Guillermo Monsalve and Deyanira Gómez."