Colombia: Witness Linked to Uribe Probe Murdered
April 26, 2018 5:00PM EDT
Others Involved in Ex-President’s Case Threatened
(Washington, DC) – A witness connected to a criminal investigation of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez was murdered on April 14, 2018, and other witnesses have been threatened, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should redouble its protection of witnesses and their relatives.
The Supreme Court ordered the investigation on February 16. Uribe, now a senator, filed a criminal complaint in 2012 against Senator Iván Cepeda, contending that he had used “fraudulent” testimony to implicate Uribe and his brother Santiago in paramilitary atrocities in the 1990s. The Supreme Court rejected the allegations against Cepeda and instead initiated an investigation into whether Uribe, who was president from 2002 to 2010, had tampered with witnesses, pressing them to say that Cepeda had bribed them to implicate the former president.
“The Criminal Chamber of Colombia’s Supreme Court has shown impressive courage in initiating this investigation of Uribe,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “But the truth may never be uncovered if the government does not ensure full protection for the witnesses and their relatives.”
Media reports indicate that two men riding a motorcycle without license plates fatally shot Carlos Enrique Areiza Arango, a former paramilitary death squad member and one of the witnesses in the case, on April 14 at a mall in downtown Bello, Antioquia.
More:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/26/colombia-witness-linked-uribe-probe-murdered
