US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other US politicians have attacked the Colombian judicial system following the ruling that found former president Álvaro Uribe guilty of witness tampering and procedural fraud. In response to the verdict, issued on 28 July, Rubio tweeted, ‘[f]ormer Colombian President Uribe’s only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland. The weaponization of Colombia’s judicial branch by radical judges has now set a worrisome precedent.’
Other US politicians on the far-right also blasted the ruling. Florida Congress Member Mario Díaz-Balart tweeted that the ‘witch hunt against former President [Uribe] represents a clear violation of the rule of law and reflects the growing influence of far-left forces aligned with [President Gustavo Petro].’
Another Florida politician, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, tweeted ‘[t]hey condemn him because he refused to make pacts with criminals, because he is an obstacle to the radical left that wants to take power and convert Colombia into another Venezuela.’ Uribe had endorsed Salazar’s congressional electoral campaign in 2020.
In response to Rubio, President Petro said that ‘an interference in the judicial affairs of another country is an interference in national sovereignty.’ Other politicians backed the president. ‘This type of foreign interference cannot be accepted in silence,’ tweeted Congress Member David Racero of the governing Historic Pact coalition.
Liberal Party politician Juan Fernando Cristo, who served as Interior Minister during the centre-right government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-18), tweeted that Judge Heredia’s ruling ‘demonstrates the strength of our institutions and the guarantee of the independence and autonomy of justice.’
Uribe has long been implicated over links to right-wing paramilitary groups since serving as governor of Antioquia in the 1990s, when paramilitary violence escalated in the region and across Colombia. Under his 2002-10 presidency, the military committed extreme human rights violations, including the murders of at least 6,402 civilians falsely presented as guerrillas killed in combat. Atrocities carried out by the army and its paramilitary proxies were met with almost total impunity. The later ‘parapolitics’ scandal saw Uribe’s cousin convicted of links to paramilitary groups, alongside 60 members of his political coalition.
The recent court ruling is the latest development in a case that began in 2014 when Uribe accused left-wing senator Iván Cepeda of fraud and of falsely claiming Uribe had colluded with paramilitary groups. However, in 2018, the Supreme Court found Uribe’s claims to be unfounded and instead opened an investigation into the former president over alleged witness tampering.
The unwarranted interventions by US politicians demonstrate further the ties between the US far right and its equivalent in Colombia, which reveres Uribe as its figurehead. In 2020, Senators María Fernanda Cabal and Juan David Vélez of the Democratic Centre party, which was founded by Uribe, campaigned in favour of Donald Trump ahead of that year’s US presidential election.
Rubio’s connections with the Colombian far-right go back many years. In October 2016, Alvaro Uribe visited Florida to campaign against the FARC peace process among the state’s sizable Colombian population. He was joined by then-Senator Rubio and Congressman Díaz-Balart.
During the 2018-22 presidency of Iván Duque, a Democratic Centre politician hand-picked by Uribe as the party’s presidential nomination, Colombia promoted US foreign policy by actively pursuing regime change in Venezuela and collaborating with the Trump government to designate Cuba as a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ despite the key roles that Cuba and Norway played in the success of the 2016 Colombian peace agreement.
The second Trump government has seen a continuation of ties between the Colombian and US far right. In May this year, Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal, a presidential hopeful known for her extremist views, which have included regular attacks on trade unions and the pro-peace movement, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Mexico in 2024 and in Hungary in May 2025. She joined a long list of right-wingers from around the world including Argentinean anarcho-liberal President Javier Millei, former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, as well as European far-right politicians Gert Wilders, Viktor Orban and even Liz Truss. CPAC has founded a Colombian chapter, and the CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp, recently said the group intends to hold a conference in Colombia next year, presumably if the right wins the 2026 election.
Since Trump’s 2024 election, the US has cut funding for Colombia’s peace process, a move welcomed by the Colombian right which bitterly opposes the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas and ongoing ‘Total Peace’ talks initiated under the Petro government. In January this year, Trump threatened Colombia with 25% tariffs and the revocation of visas for Colombian government officials, as well as ‘their allies and supporters’.
On 3 July, Colombian Congress Members in the governing Historic Pact coalition wrote to the US Congress’ Ethics Committee to request it investigate Díaz-Balart, Salazar and a third US politician, Carlos Antonio Giménez, over their alleged support for a coup attempt against Petro.
With an appeal by Uribe’s defence team due to be heard by October, this is unlikely to be the last time that US politicians seek to intervene in the former president’s case.