BOGOTA – Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe will be serving house arrest at his ranch in northern Colombia after the Colombian Supreme Court ordered him detained on Tuesday.
The announcement prompted some to cry, others to create memes, and others to take the streets to celebrate and protest. In South Florida, most Colombians are Uribe supporters, but Colombian families worldwide are divided on the subject.
“It’s one of the more historic rulings by the Supreme Court, because it’s the first time a president is held accountable for something he ... allegedly did,” said Sergio Guzman, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a political risk consulting firm.
While the Supreme Court is reviewing Uribe’s case into alleged witness tampering, a Democratic Center party spokesman told reporters in Bogotá on Wednesday that he and his two sons, Jeronimo and Tomas were diagnosed with COVID-19.
Uribistas credit him for weakening the leftist guerrillas and increasing security with the help of the United States during his two-term presidency from 2002 to 2010. His opponents accuse him of allowing an army and paramilitary partnership responsible for massacres as a means to an end.
Sen. Ivan Cepeda, the son of a Colombian Communist Party politician who was killed in 1994, started to investigate Uribe eight years ago. The former president’s alleged links to right-wing paramilitary forces have made him the center of several investigations.
“No matter how powerful you are, no one is above the law,” Cepeda said during a news conference.