Colombia’s former chief prosecutor claims to have incriminating evidence that former President Alvaro Uribe was responsible for massacres while acting as governor of Antioquia.
Former Prosecutor General Eduardo Montealegre, announced he will present the results of an investigation in June that would prove that the leader of the far-right Democratic Center party was responsible for massacres in the villages of Aro and La Granja in the 1990s.
Montealegre vowed to personally deliver this alleged evidence to the Supreme Court and the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
The incendiary announcement by Eduardo Montealegre and his former deputy, Jorge Fernando Perdomo, followed an order by Congress’ Accusations Commission to investigate the pair for their alleged participation in the bribery of Supreme Court magistrates.
Colombia’s former chief prosecutor must be charged over Supreme Court bribes: congress commission
Montealegre claimed that the corruption claims made by the Accusations Commission president Edward Rodriguez, a member of Uribe’s far-right Democratic Center party, is part of a political persecution of those deemed political enemies of the divisive former president.
Eduardo Montealegre
“I need you to tell me when in my life I’ve used justice to arm persecutions,” Uribe responded on Twitter Wednesday.
When the current leader of the far-right Democratic Center party was president, now-defunct intelligence agency DAS spied on perceived political rivals and on multiple occasions fabricated false criminal claims against leftist politicians.
After Uribe left office in 2010, his successor Juan Manuel Santos dismantled the DAS. The prosecution began uncovering multiple crimes committed by former presidential aides, initially under former Prosecutor General Viviane Morales.
When Montealegre took office, Uribe was facing legal problems for years over allegedly bribing his ministers to approve constitutional changes so that he could be reelected in 2006 and his political allies’ ties to paramilitary groups.
Corroborated evidence has long pointed to Uribe’s involvement in the 1997 massacre in El Aro, where 14 people were murdered by paramilitary group AUC before the village was burned to the ground.
A 2006 Inter-American Court ruling convicted the Colombian state of having taken part in the massacre, concluding the army, local police and Uribe’s governor’s office had either actively participated or had been criminally negligent in their duty to protect the population.
A case against Uribe has never been tried and several key witnesses who implicated him in the massacres have been assassinated or extradited.
Was Uribe complicit in a 1997 paramilitary massacre?
Now, Montealegre claims to have conclusive evidence, but has not revealed it yet.