⁍ Colombia’s Supreme Court placed former President Alvaro Uribe under house arrest on Tuesday while a fraud and witness tampering case continues.

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⁍ Uribe, a mentor of President Ivan Duque who now serves as a senator, has repeatedly declared his innocence in the case.

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⁍ The Supreme Court ruling is the first ever in Colombia ordering the detention of a former president.

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– For the first time ever in Colombia, a former president has been put under house arrest. Alvaro Uribe, who served as president from 2002 to 2010, was placed under arrest Tuesday in a fraud and witness tampering case, Reuters reports. Uribe, who is now a senator, has repeatedly declared his innocence in the case and questioned the court’s independence. The case stems from a long-running feud between Uribe and leftist Senator Ivan Cepeda. In 2012, Uribe accused Cepeda of orchestrating a plot to tie him to right-wing paramilitary groups. But in 2018 the court said Cepeda had collected information from former fighters as part of his work and had not paid or pressured former paramilitaries. Instead it was Uribe who was at fault, the court said, adding that his allies had undertaken new witness tampering efforts even after its original ruling. Uribe and lawmaker Alvaro Hernan Prada face prison terms of up to 12 years. That would put Uribe in the ranks of other former Latin American presidents, including Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Peru’s Alberto Fujimori, who have served time in confinement.