A Colombian court has found the country’s former president Álvaro Uribe guilty of witness tampering.

The 73-year-old, who served as president from 2002 to 2010, was convicted on Monday of trying to persuade witnesses to lie for him in a separate investigation. He faces a 12-year prison sentence in a case that has become highly politicised.

The case dates back to 2012, when Uribe accused the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda before the supreme court of hatching a plot to falsely link him to rightwing paramilitary groups involved in Colombia’s long-standing conflict.

The court decided against prosecuting Cepeda and pursued his claims against Uribe. As the judge started reading her verdict, Uribe – who attended the trial virtually – sat shaking his head. He is Colombia’s first-ever former head of state to be convicted of a crime.

Paramilitary groups in Colombia emerged in the 1980s to fight Marxist guerrillas that had taken up arms against the state two decades earlier with the stated goal of combating poverty and political marginalisation, especially in rural areas.

Many armed groups adopted cocaine trafficking as their main source of income, the genesis of a deadly rivalry for resources and smuggling routes that continues to this day.

Uribe was a politician on the right of the political spectrum – like all Colombian presidents before the current leader, Gustavo Petro, who unseated Uribe’s Democratic Centre party in 2022 elections.

During his tenure, Uribe led a relentless military campaign against drug cartels and the Farc guerrilla army, which signed a peace deal with his successor, Juan Manuel Santos, in 2016.

After Cepeda accused him of having had ties to paramilitary groups responsible for human rights violations, Uribe is alleged to have contacted jailed ex-fighters to lie for him. He claims he only wanted to convince them to tell the truth.

More than 90 witnesses testified in the trial, which began in May 2024. Prosecutors produced evidence during the trial of at least one paramilitary ex-fighter who said he was contacted by Uribe to change his story.