It’s been three weeks since the presidential candidate barely survived gunfire in a Bogotá park. Some criminals have been netted – but the big fish swim free.
Here’s an update…
How is the senator doing?
Better. According to the hospital treating the 39-year-old politician, his condition passed from “critical” to “serious” on June 24, signalling a slight improvement. There is still no news on any neurological damage, or information if he has regained consciousness. The senator from right-wing Centro Democratico party was publicly campaigning in Modelia, a barrio in the west of Bogotá, on June 7, when a hitman shot him twice in the head and once in the leg.
In another blow to his family the stricken senator’s grandmother, Nydia Quintera, died aged 93 on June 30, the family announced. She was a former Colombian first lady married to Uribe’s grandfather, Julio Cesar Turbay, the country’s president from 1978 to 1982.
Who shot the senator?
Several members of the hit squad have been rounded up, including the shooter himself, a 15-year-old small-time criminal drawn into the plot with promises of cash. He himself was shot and captured within minutes of the attack, and since said he was instructed to carry out the shooting by criminal handlers, given a gun, and shown the target. He did not even know his target was a politician.
Other accomplices arrested in the following days were: Carlos Mora, known as “El Veneco”, who drove the car that delivered the gun to shooter, Katerine Martínez, alias “Andrea”, who transported the gun, and William González, known as “Hermano”, who was waiting with another get-away car. All were spotted on CCTV cameras in Modelia planning the attempted killing, and again close by the shooter on the day, along with alias El Costeño, a shadowy figure spotted on camera alongside the rest of the gang.
We also know El Costeño used to run a barber shop in a barrio near the airport. It’s also been revealed that the barber planned to murder his own gang after the hit, starting with the 15-year-old, then Mora, and possibly Martínez. This plot could have been averted by their arrests after the attack.
A demon barber! You could say the other gang members had a close shave…
You could say that. According to reports of testimony from 19-year-old Martínez, who had been a criminal associate of El Costeño for two years, the barber told her he was going to kill Mora “because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut” and eliminate his 15-year-old protégé to cover his tracks.
What we do know is that apart from trimming beards, El Costeño was well known to the Bogotá police and had an extensive criminal record, with a history of extortion, violence, armed robbery among other crimes committed primarily in Bogotá, and links to paid assassins.
So where is El Costeño now?
If we knew that we could be 300 million pesos richer. That’s the bounty being offered for Elder Arteago, recently revealed as El Costeño, now the most wanted person in Colombia. He has links with the coastal Urabá region of Colombia – home to the Clan de Golfo drug gang – and also the eastern department of Caquetá, where Mora lived and where Martinéz was captured, and a hotspot for dissident armed groups.
But he is also very much seen as the key organizer on the ground, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, who recruited the team to try and kill Uribe.
Does the plot go higher?
As high as the president, if you believe Miguel Uribe’s lawyers: on June 24 they filed a complaint against President Petro with the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Committee for alleged “harassment” of the senator and presidential candidate.
The complaint stated that, while it could not be confirmed that Petro’s comments were the motive for the attack, they could have created a “favorable environment”. The lawyers presented a 20-page document with 42 tweets by Petro mentioning Uribe. But so far there is zero evidence that the shooting was a spontaneous hate crime stirred up by the president’s itchy twitter finger.
What investigators have announced is that the attack was planned in detail by a criminal group already immersed in the murky world of drug trafficking and contract killings, and the masterminds behind it seem to have mobilized large sums of money and resources such as specialized weaponry.
What does the gun tell us?
Soon after the shooting, the police chief revealed that the gun used in the attack was a Glock 9mm pistol previously sold legally in a sports store in Texas. That the Austrian-made weapon made it to Colombia is not unusual; 60% of illegal guns come in clandestinely from the US, backloaded by drug gangs.
What was strange, according to the 24-page ballistic report that filtered to the media, was that the gun had an attachment to convert it to rapid fire, like a mini machine gun, and was loaded with bullets tipped with bronze for better penetration.
Why they failed is something of a mystery, though some gun experts have speculated that one factor was the elevated height of the senator (he was standing on beer crates a meter above ground level) meant the bullets struck him at an angle, barely penetrating his cranium.
The style of weapon and ammunition, and the way they were supplied – delivered to Martínez by a masked man on a motorbike the day before the hit – have all the hallmarks of a contract killing.
So, who ordered the contract?
So far that information has not emerged. Martínez gave testimony stating that El Costeño had told her the contract was worth 700 million pesos (US$175,000). She has not revealed who was paying.
Investigators see El Costeño as the guy on the ground, but also a vital link to the intellectual authors of the attack. But so far he has evaded capture despite a nationwide manhunt. And maybe he never will appear; people up the chain could also be covering their tracks.
Of course, the missing piece of the puzzle could come at any moment. Meanwhile there is plenty of speculation, with most fingers pointing at Colombia’s dissident guerrilla groups.
Was the attack political?
It seems so. This week Colombia’s top prosecutor, Luz Adriana Camargo, confirmed the investigation’s axis that the attack was “political” having discarded any factors related to Uribe’s personal life, and she reinforced the findings that it was meticulously planned and “the work of an organized criminal organization”.
But which one? In Colombia there is no shortage of candidates. One line of inquiry is the so-called Caquetá connection, based on a smattering of evidence linking some of the perpetrators to this part of Colombia dominated by armed groups.
What happened in Caquetá?
Martinéz was arrested in Florencia, capital town of Caquetá, after the attack, and both El Costeño and Mora have criminal links to the zones, with Mora being arrested for transporting illegal arms there last year. He was detained but then set free.
According to Semana magazine, which seems to have information leaked from within the investigation, Martínez fled to Caquetá after the Modelia attack at the insistence of El Costeño, who tried to convince her to hide in the jungle with guerrillas he had contact with near to Florencia, and even suggested she do some courses in “sniper shooting and drone operations”.
The 19-year-old Martínez, a former webcam model, was not thrilled by the idea of life in the jungle and even suspected it was a trap and the guerrillas would kill her. At this point she was arrested and returned to Bogotá.
The prosecutor’s office has confirmed it is following up the Caquetá leads and the gang’s connections with armed groups there, particularly the Segunda Marquetalia, a band of former FARC guerrillas that reneged on the 2016 peace process.
Are they close to solving the case then?
Maybe. Maybe not. Caquetá could be a false lead; urban criminal gangs frequently interact with rural armed groups, to trade guns and drugs, and it seems unlikely El Costeño would direct Martínez straight to the lair of the masterminds.
Meanwhile another suspect is emerging: alias El Mosco, a former crime boss from Bogotá who hid for years in Ecuador, with links to El Costeño and Hermano, but he is likely a middle man and not the kingpin.
El Mosco also has links to El Bronx, an historic crime center of Bogotá and for decades a virtual no-go area for state security forces. Theories are circulating that that drug barons that inhabited El Bronx bear a grudge against politicians standing against drug trafficking in the city. A massive police and military intervention reclaimed the El Bronx from the grip of gangs in 2016 and upended the criminal landscape of the city.
And why is the Uribe case attracting so much news?
Political violence is unfortunately common in Colombia: according to figures from think tank Indepaz, 74 local politicians were assassinated between 2016 and 2024, mostly municipal councilors in small towns or rural areas.
The capital city has been spared these high-profile attacks in recent decades, though murder hits between gang members occur almost weekly, usually in the poor barrios.
Occasionally targeted killings affect up-market zones, such as the murders of two emerald czars which happened a year apart but incredibly in an identical way: both were shot by a sniper hidden in the hillside opposite the same posh flats where they both lived. Those killings are still unresolved.
Meanwhile the attack on Miguel Uribe has awakened memories of Bogotá in the 1980s and 90s when several political leaders were gunned down, including Luis Carlos Galán, a left-wing presidential candidate shot at a public rally in nearby Soacha. His son, Carlos Galán, is currently Bogotá’s mayor.
Can we expect more attacks on high profile politicians?
Many see it as a high possibility, based on the assumption that the ulterior motive behind the Modelia shooting was to sow political division, and presidential elections are slated for 2026. One worrying detail after the shooting was the finding of a photo of Carlos Galán in the cell-phone of the 15-year-old attacker. Was the Bogotá mayor another target?
What is clear is that no-one will rest easy until investigators nail down exactly who was behind the failed attack on Miguel Uribe. And why they wanted him dead.