Álvaro Uribe Vélez

Álvaro Uribe was born in Medellín, the oldest of five children. His father, Alberto Uribe Sierra, was a landowner. When he was 10, his family left their Salgar ranch and moved to Medellín. He graduated in 1970 from the Instituto Jorge Robledo, after being expelled from the Medellín Benedictine School for arguing with the Benedictine monks.

Uribe studied law at the University of Antioquia and graduated in 1977. His father was killed by a guerrilla group during a kidnapping attempt in 1983. After his father's death, Uribe focused on his political career and became a member of the Colombian Liberal Party. Uribe was appointed mayor of Medellín by Antioquia governor Álvaro Villegas in 1982, although he only held the post for five months as he resigned for reasons that remain controversial. According to Villegas, then President Belisario Betancur pressured the governor to ask for his resignation because he claimed that Uribe had links to the Medellín Cartel.

In 1993, he attended Harvard University, receiving a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management from Harvard Extension School and a Certificate in Negotiation and Dispute Resolution from Harvard Law School. Between 1998 and 1999, after having completed his term in office as the governor of Antioquia, he studied at St Antony's College, Oxford, England, on a Chevening–Simón Bolívar scholarship and was appointed Senior Associate Member at St Antony's College.

Uribe married Lina María Moreno Mejía in 1979. They have two sons, Tomás and Jerónimo.

Home detention

In August 2020, Uribe was placed under house arrest at his hacienda "El Ubérrimo" by the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia, as part of ongoing judicial invenstigations into El Aro and La Granja massacres, which took place while he was Governor of Antioquia. Uribe's detention marked the first time in Colombian history that a court had detained a former president. The day following his arrest, Uribe tested positive for COVID-19, but he announced he was cured six days later. On 18 August 2020, Uribe resigned his seat in the Senate of Colombia. Uribe was later released on 10 October 2020, after the Supreme Court ruled that there was a lack of evidence to suggest he engaged in witness tampering.

Another court case, called "Caso Uribe", was also levied against Uribe. It was a dispute in which Uribe began as a victim and ended as a victimizer, according to the status granted by the high court to his counterpart in this process, Senator Iván Cepeda.

The process passed into the hands of the Office of the Colombian Attorney General, thus evading the jurisdiction that the Supreme Court of Justice had over it. The prosecutor delegated to this high court, Gabriel Jaimes Durán, requested the preclusion of the process, ruling in a four-month investigation on the probative material that the court compiled over the course of three years.

In May 2024, Uribe was formally charged with witness tampering and bribery in the Caso Uribe, following the release of wiretapped phone conversations in which he was heard discussing efforts to reverse two former paramilitaries who were set to testify against him with one of his lawyers. A court in Bogotá found him in July 2025 guilty of witness tampering and a fraud charge and sentenced him in August to 12 years' home confinement. As part of an appeal, he was ordered released by the Superior Tribunal on 19 August pending a final decision on his conviction. On 21 October 2025, a court overturned Uribe's bribery conviction.

In 1976, at the age of 24, Uribe was Chief of Assets for the Public Utilities of Medellín (Empresas Públicas de Medellín). He served as Secretary General of the Ministry of Labor under Alfonso López Michelsen from 1977 to 1978. During this time, he married Lina Moreno, a philosopher from Medellín. President Julio César Turbay named him Director of Civil Aviation from 1980 to 1982, at the age of 28, after the previous director was assassinated. He was appointed Mayor of Medellín in 1982, but was removed five months later due to alleged connections with drug cartels.

Senator of Colombia

Uribe was elected one of Antioquia's senators from 1986 to 1990, and again from 1990 to 1994. As senator, he served as president of the Seventh Commission and he supported laws dealing with reform of pensions, labor and social security, as well as promotion of administrative careers, cooperative banking, brown sugar, and protection for women. Some of the legislation later drew criticism, in particular some which reduced the state's responsibility for social security. During his later term, he received official and unofficial awards as one of the "best senators" (1990, 1992 and 1993) and as the senator with the "best legislative initiatives" (1992).

Governor of Antioquia

He was elected governor of the department of Antioquia for the 1995 to 1997 term. During his term, Uribe developed what he described as a model for a communitarian state, where in theory, citizens would participate in the administration's decision making. It was claimed that this model would help improve employment, education, administrative transparency and public security.

Within his jurisdiction, Uribe openly supported a national program of licensed private security services that became known as CONVIVIR, which had been created by Decree 356 issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in February 1994. The groups quickly became controversial – while some reportedly improved security in communities and intelligence coordination with the military, their members were accused of abusing civilians and operated without serious oversight. In 1998, Human Rights Watch stated: "we have received credible information that indicated that the CONVIVIR groups of the Magdalena Medio and of the southern Cesar regions were directed by known paramilitaries and had threatened to assassinate Colombians who were considered as guerrilla sympathizers or who refused to join the cooperative groups".

Colombian parapolitics scandal

In November 2006, a political crisis emerged as several of Uribe's congressional supporters were questioned or charged by the Colombian Supreme Court and the office of the Attorney General for having alleged links to paramilitary groups. Álvaro Araújo, brother of Uribe's Foreign Minister María Consuelo Araújo, was among those summoned for questioning. In November, the former ambassador to Chile, Salvador Arana, was charged with the murder of a mayor in a small town in the Department of Sucre. The Supreme Court sentenced Arana to 40 years in prison in December 2009.

In April 2007, Senator Gustavo Petro made several accusations against Uribe during a televised congressional debate about paramilitarism in Antioquia. Petro said that some of the Uribe family's farms in the north of the country had been previously used as staging grounds for paramilitary forces. He also showed a picture of Santiago Uribe, the President's brother, together with Fabio Ochoa, a drug dealer, in 1985. Petro also argued that Governor Uribe's office allowed paramilitary personnel to participate in some of the legal cooperative neighborhood watch groups known as CONVIVIR. Another accusation concerned the possible participation of a helicopter belonging to the former Antioquia Governor's administration during a paramilitary massacre.

Two days later, Uribe publicly revealed that former US Vice President Al Gore had canceled his participation in a pro-environment event Uribe was to attend in Miami due to the continuing allegations against him. The Colombian President reacted by organizing a press conference during which he addressed several of the accusations Senator Petro and others had made against him. Uribe argued that his family had nothing to do with any massacres and that they had already sold the implicated farms several years before the alleged events. He also stated that the Uribes and the Ochoas were both famous in the horse breeding business, causing their meetings to be both common and public. He claimed that the helicopter's hours and missions had been strictly logged, making it impossible for it to have participated in any massacre. Uribe said that he supported the CONVIVIR groups but was not solely responsible for their creation, adding that other civilian and military authorities also participated in their oversight. He also said that he dismantled some CONVIVIR groups when doubts began to surround their activities.

On 22 April 2008, former senator Mario Uribe Escobar, one of the Colombian President's cousins and a close political ally, was arrested after being denied asylum at the Costa Rican embassy in Bogotá, as part of a judicial inquiry into the links between politicians and paramilitary groups. Mario Uribe has been accused of meeting with paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso to plan land seizures. On 22 February 2011, Uribe Escobar was convicted and sentenced to 90 months in jail after the Colombian Supreme Court found him guilty of the charge of conspiring with paramilitary groups.

On 23 April 2008, Uribe revealed that a former paramilitary fighter had accused him of helping to plan the 1997 massacre of El Aro, a charge which he said was under official investigation. Uribe described the accuser as a "disgruntled convict with an axe to grind", denied the charges and said there was proof of his innocence. The Colombian newsweekly Revista Semana reported that the paramilitary in question, Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández, had not mentioned Uribe during previous declarations made more than five years ago, when he was sentenced for his own role in the massacre. The magazine also listed a number of possible inconsistencies in his most recent testimony, including the alleged presence of General Manosalva, who had died months before the date of the meeting where the massacre was planned.