[RSS][Colombia] Santiago Uribe, brother of Colombia’s former president, sentenced to 28 years in prison

[RSS]

The brother of Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe was sentenced to 28 years in prison for his involvement in homicides committed by his paramilitary group in the early 1990’s.

The Antioquia appeals court convicted Santiago Uribe, the youngest of the two remaining Uribe brothers, for his role in the creation and leadership of the 12 Apostles paramilitary group that was active in his native province between 1992 and 1995.

With “rational certainty” the court convicted the former president’s brother for his “criminal responsibility for forming and leading the criminal group that carried out its activities in northern Antioquia, particularly in the municipalities of Yarumal, Campamento, and Valdivia during the early 1990s.”

War crimes tribunal JEP, which has been carrying out separate investigations into Uribe’s death squad, said earlier this year that the 12 Apostles committed more than 500 homicides as part of a terror campaign that sought to benefit businessmen and organized crime in the north of Antioquia.

Medellin’s district prosecution began investigations into Santiago Uribe’s role in the terror campaign in 1995, but dropped these investigations as paramilitary groups close to the Uribe family began usurping prosecution offices throughout Colombia.

These investigations were resumed in 2015, but the charges were surprisingly dismissed by a Medellin judge.

In a response, the former president said on social media platform X that he felt “profound pain for the conviction of my brother.”

Both Uribe brothers have long denied their ties to the Medellin cartels and their alleged ties to paramilitary groups formed by the far-right wing of the cartel.

With Santiago in prison, his brother will have to defend himself against a prosecution investigation into his alleged role in multiple paramilitary massacres and the homicide of a human rights defender when and immediately after Uribe was governor of Antioquia between 1995 and 1997.

The violence used by Uribe and his 12 Apostles was later copied by paramilitary organization AUC, which ended up murdering tens of thousands of people and forcibly displacing millions.

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Source: https://colombiareports.com/santiago-ur ... in-prison/