Uribe refuses to back down in libel battle

Ex-President Alvaro Uribe has refused to retract the accusations at the center of his defamation battle with political analyst Leon Valencia.

Valencia, from the NGO Nuevo Arco Iris, filed a libel law suit against Uribe in July after the ex-president called him a terrorist in the media.

Tuesday’s hearing was the second attempt at organizing a reconciliation between the two. Uribe did not attend, instead sending his lawyer to read out a prepared statement.

The statement read, “a person cannot accept something he/she has not done and the crime of defamation supposes the person knows what he/she said was false, ex-President Uribe is convinced what he said is true.”

After the hearing Valencia told journalists, “Alvaro Uribe has no interest in conciliation nor reconciliation and he also has very little respect for the Prosecutor General’s Office or for the prosecutors”.

Valencia has filed for damages of $670,000, which he has said he will donate to victims of “false positives” and anti-personnel mines.

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