Bogotá, Colombia — Colombia continues to take a position over who’s behind final week’s assassination try of Miguel Uribe Turbay, a Colombian senator and pre-candidate for the 2026 presidential election, gunned down in a public park throughout a rally within the nation’s capital.
The broad-daylight taking pictures, by a younger hitman employed by a neighborhood drug gang, left the 39-year-old right-wing politician gravely injured and nonetheless in intensive care after life-saving mind surgical procedure.
However even with the rapid detention of the shooter – tackled near the scene by Uribe’s bodyguards – and two subsequent arrests of suspected accomplices, there are nonetheless many inquiries to reply.
Investigations up to now have pointed to an city drug gang finishing up the assault. However as many Colombians know, such gangs will kill for money alongside drug dealing and extortion. The hidden sponsors behind such acts can take years to disclose. Or by no means.
Will the Miguel Uribe case be any totally different? As political tensions rise, and politicians concern for his or her lives, many are hoping for a fast decision.
A stroll within the park
Uribe was attacked within the early night of June 7 whereas addressing a public rally in a small park in Modelia, a barrio within the west of Bogotá following a walk-about with native Centro Democratic (Democratic Heart) supporters.
The senator was a nationally identified determine and scion of a political household (his grandfather was president) who, regardless of his youthful seems to be, had been within the rough-and-tumble of Colombian and Bogotá politics for a few years, and beforehand an unsuccessful mayoral candidate.
The pre-planned occasion within the busy excessive avenue ended with an impromptu soap-box tackle – in actual fact he stood on stacked beer crates — minimize quick by a barrage of photographs from a Glock 9mm pistol wielded by a 14 or 15-year-old would-be murderer, who filtered by the gang simply avoiding the sunshine safety element supposedly guarding the senator.
Regardless of his gilded previous, Uribe had a status as a hard-working politician, loyal to his mentors, and ready to pound the pavement at avenue degree, pushing his agendas in cafes, native enterprise and mingling with the general public, similar to Saturday final.
The teenager fired to inside meters of the candidate and three bullets discovered their mark: one within the leg and two within the head.
Atmosphere of violence
At the same time as Uribe was bundled away bleeding and gravely injured, the taking pictures despatched shockwaves by the Colombian political institution and rocked a capital metropolis the place political assassinations – or makes an attempt – had been seen as a factor of the previous.
“We’re going again thirty-five years”, was a chorus heard round Bogotá final week with echoes of the darkish days of a drug cartel’s’ struggle on the Colombian state and extermination campaigns by paramilitaries that noticed dozens of largely left-wing politicians injured or killed.
Tragically, Miguel Uribe’s personal mom, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in 1991 after being kidnapped by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel as a part of his all-out struggle to finish extradition of drug kingpins to america. The occasion is recounted in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s ‘Information of a Kidnapping’.
Journalist Vicky Dávila, herself a presidential candidate, was fast accountable incumbent President Gustavo Petro as accountable, in spirit if not deed.
“Petro has promoted an atmosphere of violence,” she introduced from outdoors the hospital the place the sufferer was in intensive care, with out offering any factual hyperlink between the Colombian mandate and the occasions in Modelia.
The U.S. Secretary of State discovered widespread floor with Dávila: “It’s the results of leftist rhetoric,” asserted Marco Rubio, calling on Petro to “mood his incendiary rhetoric.”
Who advantages?
In one other state of affairs offered by left-leaning former Medellín mayor Daniel Quintero – once more offering no proof – he blamed legal group Clan del Golfo (often known as the Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia or EGC), itself born out of assassination squads, for making an attempt to kill Uribe as a part of a plot with “an excessive proper group, together with a overseas nation, to destabilize the federal government”.
Quintero adopted this cui bono – who advantages? – line of considering to show the blame again on Vicky Dávila herself: she would profit by getting fellow right-wing rival Miguel Uribe “out of the way in which” whereas bringing Petro into disrepute, he conjectured.
Dávila herself then pivoted from Petro to blaming Iván Mordisco, commander of FARC dissident group Estado Mayor Central or Central Common Workers (EMC), as a part of a “terrorist operation” towards right-wing politicians, herself included.
However Mordisco is only one of many suspected warlords, gang bosses and guerrilla comandantes who may gain advantage from sowing the seeds of political chaos by killing a candidate.
The issue in Colombia is just not a scarcity of suspects, quite a surplus.
Pointing to “The Pot”
Some details are rising. First, that the teenage gunman had been employed to drag the set off, a typical state of affairs within the Colombian underworld.
“I did it for the cash, to assist my household,” shouted the gunman as he was pinned to the bottom by bodyguards who captured him shortly after fleeing the park, in a scene captured on many telephones by many bystanders.
He additionally yelled out he was employed by “la olla” or “the pot”, Colombian avenue slang for native drug retailers, and will “give numbers”, presumably which means the telephone numbers of his contractors.
The would-be murderer was briefly hospitalized for a leg wound then put in protecting custody, accused of tried homicide and possession of an unlawful gun.
In response to info launched by official state investigators, the teenager later confessed he had been contracted for 20 million pesos (US$5,000) by three suspicious individuals – two males and a girl — noticed on CCTV cameras with the shooter in a small gray automotive within the hours main as much as the assault.
The Caquetá connection
Within the days following the taking pictures, the gray automotive was stopped at a roadblock within the south of Bogotá, and the driving force apprehended. Native media reported that driver was Carlos Mora, a 27-year-old who gave an tackle from Florencia, Caquetá, who judicial sources informed newspaper El Tiempo was linked to “networks of employed killers outsourced by legal gangs and armed teams”.
In actual fact, in accordance with judicial paperwork, Mora had been arrested earlier than in Florencia in September 2024 and charged with transporting military-grade weapons and ammunition, supposedly on behalf of one of many armed teams that thrive within the area.
Official investigators additionally reported that Mora and the gray automotive had been seen on cameras in Modelia on June 5, simply two days earlier than the assault, confirming the suspicion that the hit was preplanned, and Mora was a key organizer.
Then, on June 14 investigators introduced the seize in Florencia of 19-year-old Katerine Martínez, alias “Gabriela,” suspected of being the individual seen on CCTV cameras in Modelia with Mora and the teenager on the day of the taking pictures. She was flown to Bogotá this weekend for questioning.
The fourth suspect seen on avenue cameras, which Mora and the teenager referred to by his nickname “El Costeño” – a reasonably widespread nickname in Colombia – remains to be at massive.
March of Silence
Will these arrests calm nerves within the capital? Unlikely.
Marches to help the stricken senator held throughout Colombia this weekend referred to as for “fraternity, union and respect for all times”, and ostensibly shunned political messaging. However in Bogotá a minimum of, some marches included calls to oust Petro.
Whereas La Marcha de Silencio was peaceable, with an estimated 70,000 gathering in Bogotá’s Plaza Bolivar, some placards learn “Petro’s phrases kill”, or “Petro, out”.
Petro, who has strongly condemned the assault on Uribe, and initially proven help for the march, mentioned that members had been tricked right into a politically polarized occasion.
“Marchers in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali did it for peace and the lifetime of Senator Miguel Uribe. Have been we deceived?” he tweeted after the occasion.
“The Colombian folks need peace, zero deaths, a referendum, and rights and freedoms. So, if at this time’s march was a hoax, let’s take to the streets.”
Violence on the transfer
Petro’s name to counteraction highlights an uncomfortable reality for Colombia; that opposite to a story that political violence has diminished because the 1980 and 90s – when a minimum of 9 senior political leaders had been gunned down, largely in or round Bogotá – the assaults have merely shifted to less-visible rural areas the place, in accordance with figures from suppose tank Indepaz, 74 native politicians had been assassinated between 2016 and 2024, largely municipal councilors.
“The violence by no means disappeared, solely mutated,” introduced Indepaz director Leonardo González after the Uribe taking pictures. “We demand actual situations of safety and participation for many who interact in politics from the margins.”
The scenario is equally grim for group leaders and social activists, of whom 71 have been murdered within the first 5 months of 2025, persevering with a blight that in most nations would create a storm of headlines however in Colombia is barely reported.
The nation may now face a double whammy of a magnicide risk on prime of the persistent killings of group organizers.
Relying on chaos
This state of affairs performs to public fears that Petro’s authorities has dropped the ball by way of safety, together with his largely failed Whole Peace plan and ill-advised ceasefires which have strengthened armed teams since his time period began in 2022.
Petro has belatedly began to push again militarily towards the foremost armed teams, together with the ELN, FARC dissidents and EGC, although now with the next hill to climb, whereas undercutting their funds with excessive tonnage drug busts.
With some smaller dissident teams, he has continued negotiations even whereas placing their capos beneath risk of extradition to america.
This does have echoes of the Nineteen Eighties and 90s when the Colombian state went to struggle with the drug cartels with dire penalties. Solely now the stakes are increased: in 1990 the nation had 40,000 hectares of coca vegetation and now counts on 253,000 hectares, in accordance with United Nations Workplace on Medication and Crime (UNODC) figures from 2023.
The illicit economic system depends on preserving swathes of the nation in low-level battle, and a central state that is aware of when to again down.
In June, organized armed teams had been hanging with automotive bombs and armed assaults at state targets – with civilian collateral injury – throughout southwest Colombia.
The Bogotá taking pictures possible has its roots within the murky intersection of armed teams, gangs and Colombia’s corrosive cocaine business that thrives on political instability.
Sluggish wheels of justice
To this point, the investigation follows a well-recognized sample in Colombia the place low-level perpetrators are rapidly caught whereas the mental authors are extra elusive. Will it go increased?
State lawyer’s workplace detectives have ringfenced their investigation from authorities interference, and Uribe’s household attorneys have proclaimed a shadow investigation which can – or could not – verify the state’s findings.
In one other twist, this week the household’s investigating lawyer Victór Mosquera introduced he had himself obtained demise threats after amassing “ample proof” which he was handing over to state investigators.
Everybody’s hoping for a fast decision however not holding their breath. Solely final week, after 26 years, the Colombian state declared its duty within the 1999 homicide on Bogotá’s streets of beloved journalist and comic Jaime Garzón, whose whacky TV present Quac El Noticiero saved the nation smiling at his critical investigations.
Garzón was gunned down by killers ordered by senior state officers, however in accordance with the announcement final week, “Colombian justice has not been capable of convict all the legal community that participated within the crime.”
Not so gentle goal
The query stays: why Miguel Uribe? The senator was well-known and revered however not thought of a entrance runner for the 2026 presidential election.
However together with his penchant for public walkabouts and, on the night of June 7, in Modelia, a lowered safety element (for cost-cutting causes he was right down to a handful of guards), he may have been seen as a simple goal for the amateurish would-be assassins mendacity in wait.
Although because it seems, not so gentle. The senator’s virtually miraculous survival of two headshots at shut vary left him in a vital however secure situation per week after the occasion, and a rustic on tenterhooks to see if and the way he survives. Early this week, Uribe was rushed right into a second emergency surgical procedure after a mind bleed.
“Miguel, Colombia awaits you,” was a typical chorus at Sunday’s march, printed on banners and T-shirts.
The following month could possibly be vital for each the stricken senator and a divided nation, of which some residents may now see him as their greatest hope.
Featured picture: Supporters of Miguel Uribe. Picture credit score: Centro Democratico by way of X.
Keep forward of the curve with Enterprise Digital 24. Discover extra tales, subscribe to our e-newsletter, and be part of our rising group at nextbusiness24.com
