Defensor de Uribe: Santiago es inocente mientras recurso llega a Corte Suprema

Jaime Granados sits in Madrid, preparing for a fight that has already consumed three decades. The prominent Colombian criminal defense attorney is representing two of the country's most politically charged clients: the former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, and his younger brother Santiago, a rancher whose name has become synonymous with one of the messiest legal sagas in modern Colombian politics.

Santiago Uribe was convicted in the second instance last November of organizing a paramilitary group and involvement in a murder dating back to 1994. The victim was a bus driver named Camilo Barrientos. But Granados argues the conviction rests on a foundation so thin it should crumble under scrutiny. The case, he says, depends almost entirely on a single witness: a former police major named Juan Carlos Meneses, who claimed that when he arrived as commander of a police station in Yarumal in early 1994, his predecessor introduced Santiago Uribe as the head of a "social cleansing" group. The problem, according to Granados, is that the meeting could not have happened. Records, photographs, and documentation show that between January 4 and 10, 1994—the only window when both officers were in Yarumal—Santiago Uribe was actually in Manizales, attending a cattle fair where his ranch displayed livestock. The other supposed witness, a police officer named Alexander de Jesús Amaya Vargas, later recanted his testimony entirely. Yet Meneses's account was enough to overturn a first-instance acquittal.

The legal timeline itself tells a story of glacial movement. Granados filed closing arguments in January 2021. The first-instance judge did not issue an acquittal until 2024. The appeals court reversed that verdict in November 2025. Now, with a deadline of March 2, Granados is preparing a special appeal to Colombia's Supreme Court. Until that court rules, Santiago Uribe maintains his legal presumption of innocence—a fact Granados emphasizes with visible frustration, noting that President Gustavo Petro and senator Iván Cepeda have publicly declared him guilty of murders despite the ongoing proceedings.

The case of Santiago Uribe mirrors, in Granados's telling, a much longer hunt for evidence linking the Uribe family to paramilitarism. That search began in 2008, when political figures visited U.S. prisons where fifteen extradited paramilitary leaders—men like Salvatore Mancuso and Don Berna, whom Álvaro Uribe had extradited as president—were held. None of them claimed to have information about Uribe family connections to illegal armed groups. Why would they? Lying would have jeopardized the judicial benefits they had secured in the United States.

Iván Cepeda, now a presidential candidate and political ally of Petro, entered this story as a congressman. His father, Manuel Cepeda, had been assassinated by paramilitaries years earlier, and Cepeda built his political career partly on investigating paramilitary violence. As a legislator, he led a commission that visited Colombian prisons asking the same questions about the Uribes. He found two witnesses: Pablo Hernán Sierra and Juan Guillermo Monsalve. Sierra claimed to know about Uribe-paramilitary links through Monsalve. But Monsalve himself told prosecutors in 2012 that he had no knowledge of Álvaro Uribe, did not know him, and had only indirect references to Santiago Uribe. He repeated this account years later. Yet these statements have been recycled politically, especially during election cycles.

Alvaro Uribe, now head of the opposition Centro Democrático party and a Senate candidate, was absolved categorically in second instance of charges related to witness manipulation. But Petro and Cepeda have publicly stated he is responsible for grave crimes, including allegedly creating the Bloque Metro paramilitary faction. Granados points out that over thirty years of investigation have produced no judicial evidence of such links. The only person who made such claims was Reinaldo Villalba, now deceased, who spoke of supposed meetings to coordinate the murder of human rights defender Jesús María Valle. But everyone allegedly present at those meetings denied they occurred—including Cuco Vanoy, the paramilitary commander who provided troops for the Ituango massacre. Álvaro Uribe has never even been called for questioning on those matters.

Granados frames the entire enterprise as lawfare—the weaponization of the legal system for political ends. He notes that Cepeda, as a senator, enjoys broad immunity for his public statements, a protection that extends even after leaving office. The only exception is testimony given under oath in court, which can constitute perjury. When questioned during the trial against Álvaro Uribe, Cepeda stated under oath that he had no evidence of any Uribe connection to paramilitaries. Both cases now head to the Supreme Court's criminal chamber for final review. Granados sees this as both a necessity and a potential turning point—a chance to close chapters that have remained open for decades, consuming judicial resources and, he argues, violating the defendants' human rights through unconscionable delay.