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The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia confirmed on Wednesday the 28 years and three months prison sentence against Santiago Uribe Vélez, brother of former president Álvaro Uribe, for creating and financing the paramilitary group "Los doce apóstoles."
The Court thus upheld the ruling issued on November 25, 2025, by the Superior Court of Antioquia, which found Santiago Uribe "co-author criminally responsible for aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime and aggravated homicide, as a concurrence of crimes against humanity."
The decision is final: the Court specified that "no appeal is possible" against it, which definitively closes the legal proceedings against the cattle rancher.
The ruling establishes that Santiago Uribe participated in the formation of "Los doce apóstoles," a paramilitary group that emerged around 1992 in the municipality of Yarumal, in the department of Antioquia, comprised of ranchers, businesspeople, police officers, and a priest.
According to the ruling, the La Carolina estate, owned by the Uribe family, is said to have served as a meeting and training point for the group.
A context report from the Special Jurisdiction for Peace attributes 525 homicides to that organization, with a higher concentration in Yarumal, Valdivia, and Santa Rosa de Osos.
The specific case included in the sentence is the murder of Camilo Barrientos Durán, a bus driver who was shot by hitmen in February 1994 in Yarumal after being accused of collaborating with the guerrilla.
Former president Álvaro Uribe reacted to the news with a message on X in which he described the situation as "a devastating issue for my family."
"Dr. Jaime Granados informs me that the press is reporting that the Supreme Court has upheld the sentence against my brother Santiago. This is a devastating matter for my family," wrote the former president.
The defense of Santiago Uribe, led by lawyer Jaime Granados —who also represents the former president in his own legal cases— repeatedly argued the existence of false witnesses and media manipulation.
The process had a lengthy trajectory: the Prosecutor's Office reopened the investigation in September 2013, the arrest warrant was issued in February 2016, the formal accusation took place in October of that same year, and the trial began in October 2017.
In parallel, Álvaro Uribe himself is facing investigations for alleged links to paramilitarism during his tenure as governor of Antioquia from 1995 to 1997, including a case related to the El Aro massacre, in which 17 people were killed by paramilitaries in October 1997.
In May 2026, the Prosecutor's Office referred the case to the Supreme Court for alleged involvement in the El Aro massacre, an accusation that the former president has denied.
In November 2023, former paramilitary chief Salvatore Mancuso testified before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace that Uribe "was always aware" of the paramilitary operation in El Aro.
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