A reckoning with a period of Colombian history that has never been fully resolved
In Colombia, a court has reversed the acquittal of Santiago Uribe—brother of former president Álvaro Uribe—sentencing him to 28 years for his alleged role in the paramilitary group Los 12 Apóstoles, responsible for some three hundred killings in Antioquia during the 1990s. The ruling is not merely a legal correction; it is a delayed confrontation with a chapter of Colombian history in which the boundaries between power, violence, and complicity were never cleanly drawn. Justice, when it arrives across decades, carries the weight of all the years it was absent.
- A Colombian appellate court has overturned a year-old acquittal, abruptly reversing Santiago Uribe's legal standing and placing him on the threshold of a 28-year prison sentence.
- The conviction—covering aggravated homicide, criminal conspiracy, and crimes against humanity—reopens wounds tied to Los 12 Apóstoles, a paramilitary group blamed for roughly 300 deaths in northern Antioquia during the 1990s.
- The ruling explicitly bars house arrest and imposes a 20-year ban from public office, signaling the court's intent to treat this as a matter of historic gravity, not procedural technicality.
- Santiago Uribe took to social media to express anguish over the verdict, while the case now moves to Colombia's Supreme Court of Justice, after which an arrest warrant will be formally issued.
- The conviction lands against a backdrop of unresolved controversy surrounding the Uribe family's alleged paramilitary ties and Álvaro Uribe's contested demobilization program of the early 2000s, keeping the family's political legacy under a deepening shadow.
A Colombian appellate court this week reversed the acquittal of Santiago Uribe, the younger brother of former president Álvaro Uribe, sentencing him to 28 years in prison on charges of aggravated homicide, criminal conspiracy, and crimes against humanity. The ruling, issued by the Superior Court of Antioquia, annuls a judgment handed down just over a year ago in November 2024.
The conviction centers on Santiago Uribe's alleged ties to Los 12 Apóstoles, a paramilitary organization that operated across northern Antioquia during the 1990s and is attributed with approximately 300 killings. Beyond imprisonment, the sentence includes a 20-year ban from public office, restitution payments to victims, and an explicit rejection of house arrest. Santiago Uribe responded on social media, calling the verdict a source of profound pain. The case now awaits review by Colombia's Supreme Court of Justice, after which an arrest warrant will be issued.
The historical context is inseparable from the verdict. The Uribe family's connection to paramilitarism has long been a source of suspicion—their patriarch was killed by the FARC in a region where paramilitary and guerrilla forces competed violently for control. That shadow grew during Álvaro Uribe's presidency, when his demobilization program for the AUC paramilitary umbrella drew accusations of leniency toward perpetrators with ties to power.
Santiago Uribe's conviction is, in this sense, a reckoning with a period Colombia has never fully closed. The Supreme Court's ruling will determine what comes next, but the arrest warrant is already waiting.
A Colombian court overturned an acquittal this week, sending Santiago Uribe back into legal jeopardy. The younger brother of former president Álvaro Uribe now faces 28 years in prison—a conviction that reverses a judgment issued just over a year ago, in November 2024. The charges are grave: aggravated homicide, criminal conspiracy, and crimes against humanity. The court found him culpable in connection with Los 12 Apóstoles, a paramilitary organization that operated in the northern reaches of Antioquia province.
The Superior Court of Antioquia issued the ruling on Tuesday, annulling the earlier exoneration and imposing not only imprisonment but also a twenty-year ban from holding public office and an obligation to pay restitution to victims. The sentence will not be served at home—the court explicitly rejected any possibility of house arrest. Santiago Uribe responded through social media, describing the conviction as a source of profound pain. The next procedural step belongs to Colombia's Supreme Court of Justice; once that tribunal weighs in, an arrest warrant will be issued against the rancher, who has long been suspected of ties to the paramilitary world.
The historical backdrop matters here. Los 12 Apóstoles is credited with roughly three hundred killings across the 1990s in northern Antioquia, a decade when the region was convulsing under multiple pressures. The FARC guerrilla organization, now defunct, was expanding its presence in the area—and it was a FARC operation that killed the patriarch of the Uribe family, a landowner and cattle rancher with substantial holdings in that part of the country. The family's connection to paramilitarism has been a persistent shadow over their public standing.
That shadow deepened considerably during Álvaro Uribe's presidency. Between 2003 and 2006, he initiated a demobilization program that remains controversial to this day. The effort involved negotiations with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the AUC—an umbrella organization that had coordinated much of the paramilitary violence across the country. The program resulted in the formal dissolution of these groups, but it also generated accusations that it had been too lenient, that it had allowed perpetrators to escape accountability, and that it had benefited figures close to power. The Uribe family's own alleged involvement in paramilitary activity has cast a long shadow over those years and over the family's political legacy.
Santiago Uribe's conviction, then, is not merely a legal outcome in a single case. It is a reckoning with a period of Colombian history that has never been fully resolved—a time when state actors, paramilitaries, and guerrillas competed for control of territory and resources, and when the lines between complicity and victimhood became impossibly blurred. The court's decision to reverse the acquittal suggests that evidence of his connection to Los 12 Apóstoles was substantial enough to warrant a complete reversal of the earlier judgment. What comes next depends on the Supreme Court, but the arrest warrant is waiting.
Notable Quotes
Santiago Uribe expressed profound pain over the conviction through social media— Santiago Uribe
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did the court reverse the acquittal so decisively? What changed between November 2024 and now?
The source doesn't specify what new evidence or legal reasoning prompted the reversal. But the fact that the Superior Court of Antioquia overturned the exoneration entirely—rather than ordering a retrial—suggests the judges found the original acquittal legally flawed, not just debatable.
The paramilitary group Los 12 Apóstoles—was Santiago Uribe accused of leading it, or just being connected to it?
The court found him culpable for his relationship with the group, but the source doesn't detail whether he was a member, a financier, or something else. The connection itself was enough to sustain the conviction.
Three hundred homicides in one decade in one region. That's an enormous body count. How does Santiago Uribe's individual culpability get measured against that?
That's the tension at the heart of the case. The crimes against humanity charge suggests the court saw him as part of a broader system of violence, not just an isolated actor. But the specifics of what he personally did or ordered remain unclear from this reporting.
His brother was president. Does that make this conviction more or less likely to stick?
It cuts both ways. The family's political prominence may have protected Santiago for years—the acquittal last year suggests that. But it also means the case has been under intense scrutiny. A reversal this stark suggests the court felt confident enough to act despite the family's standing.
What happens if the Supreme Court upholds this?
Then the arrest warrant is issued, and Santiago Uribe goes to prison. Twenty years of political exile follow. The family's relationship to paramilitarism becomes legally settled, at least in his case.