Alias El Costeño caught in Bogotá after a month on the run, bringing hope that the intellectual authors of attack on Miguel Uribe will soon be revealed.
Colombia woke up Saturday to the news that Elder Arteaga, alias El Costeño, a hairdresser turned criminal and suspected prime mover in the failed attempt to kill senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, was under lock and key.
The capture by Bogotá police and Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Interpol (DIJIN) investigators came exactly one month after a 15-year-old gunman opened fire on the politician during an outdoor public meeting in a park in Modelia, a barrio in the west of the city, on June 7.
Miguel Uribe was shot twice in the head, barely surviving the attack. A month after the attack and following several emergency surgeries, the senator remains hospitalised in a serious condition.
Arteaga was suspected of being the “in charge of coordinating the criminal action, as well as identifying and delivering the weapon to the teenager who allegedly carried out the attack”, said Colombian police chief Carlos Triana on Saturday.
The career criminal would now be charged with attempted homicide, firearms offences, and the use of minors for the committing crimes, said the police chief.
Most wanted
According to CCTV footage from Modelia from before the attack, 41-year-old Arteaga was one of five people seen preparing and executing the operation, with the other four having been rounded up in June.
The teenage shooter was arrested within minutes of the attack, and three other plotters in the days that followed. Investigators quickly identified Arteaga as the fifth member and police offered a 300-million-peso (US$80,000) reward for information leading to his arrest.
Read more: Arrests made, but still questions in Miguel Uribe shooting
Investigators also revealed that Arteaga had previously worked as a hairdresser and owned a salon in Bogotá, but had got drawn into drug dealing and had links to contract killings, accruing a criminal record over 20 years.
His eventual capture came early on Saturday morning after police raided a house in Engativá, Bogotá, in a barrio close to the city’s El Dorado airport, following a nationwide manhunt.Video of the operation showed heavily armed police arriving at a small white house close to where Arteaga had previously owned and run his hair salon. Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reported this weekend that “someone handed him in for the reward,” a fact later confirmed by police but so far without details.
Move on to the masterminds
While Arteaga’s capture was widely celebrated by Colombia’s security force this weekend, many commentators also pointed out that this only closed one chapter to the affair.
The former hairdresser was widely considered by investigators as the “logistical organizer” of the attempted killing, part of a network of contract killers who murder for money.
Colombia’s defense minister Pedro Sánchez revealed that Arteaga had been paid 1,000 million pesos (US$250,000) to “orchestrate the network of hitmen and coordinate every detail of the attack” on Miguel Uribe.
He also alluded to conspiracy theories over who was behind the plot to kill Uribe, a question still unanswered. People should “avoid falling into polarization or disinformation, which only serve those who want to divide us,” he said.
But answers could come soon if, as investigators believe, Arteaga was the link to whoever ordered the contract. Police investigators and “international allies” are now on the trail of the masterminds, said Sánchez while promising quick results with Arteaga in custody.
“The intellectual authors will now also fall.”
