Colombian journalist Daniel Coronell is suing the country’s former President Alvaro Uribe and his two sons for slander after the Uribe family through Twitter accused the journalist of ties to drug lords, local media reported Wednesday.
Following the publication of a column in weelky Semana wherein Coronell wrote about the alleged conflict of interest of Tomas Uribe in the granting of public works to an Colombian company investigating for bribery, Uribe and his sons opened a Twitter attack on the journalist who they accuse of having had ties to a drug lord who is ow in jail in the United States.
The former President’s Twitter attack lasted 12 hours after which Coronell sent out a press release saying Uribe is trying to divert attention from the illegal practices of his family.
Coronell now wants Uribe and his sons Tomas and Jeronimo to explain why they say the journalist is a “mafioso,” “murderer,” “conman” and and “extortionist.”
The journalist, who is director of Noticias Uno and columnist for Semana, has been a long-time critic of Uribe and has regularly written about alleged corruption by the Uribe family. He is one of the journalists that was illegally wiretapped by state intelligence agency DAS at the time Uribe was president.