By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) -A judge on Monday found former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe guilty of abuse of process and bribery of a public official in a years-long witness tampering case, making the right-wing politician the country’s first ex-president ever convicted at trial.
Judge Sandra Liliana Heredia is reading her decision aloud to the court. She found Uribe not guilty of a third charge, bribery.
The ruling, which can be appealed, is the latest decision in a hugely politicized case which has run for some 13 years.
Uribe, 73, and his supporters say the process is a persecution and that he is innocent, while his detractors have celebrated it as the deserved downfall for a man who has been repeatedly accused of close relationships with violent right-wing paramilitaries, but never convicted of any crime.
Each charge carries a jail sentence of between 6 and 12 years. Heredia is expected to sentence Uribe in a later hearing.
“Justice does not kneel before power,” Heredia told the court on Monday morning, before spending about nine hours reading her decision. “It is at the service of the Colombian people.”
“We want to say to Colombia that justice has arrived,” the judge said, adding her full decision is some 1,000 pages long.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, Carlos Vargas, Nelson Bocanegra and Julia Symmes Cobb)
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