Colombia: Attempted assassination of Miguel Uribe allegedly linked to guerrilla group

More than a month after Colombian senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot three times — twice in the head and once in the leg — at a rally in Bogotá, the intellectual authors of the attack remain unknown.

Recent reports in the local press point to the Segunda Marquetalia — a guerrilla group that broke away from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after rejecting the 2016 peace deal with the Colombian government. The group returned to armed conflict in 2019 under the leadership of Luciano Marín, alias Iván Márquez, and is believed to have taken refuge in the mountainous border region between Colombia and Venezuela, according to specialist site InSight Crime.

According to Colombian media outlet El Tiempo, intelligence reports suggest that the order to shoot Uribe may have come from José Aldinever Sierra Sabogal, alias Zarco Aldinever. A close confidant of Iván Márquez, he is believed to have taken command of the group following Márquez's disappearance.

Colombian government sources, quoted by the same newspaper, suggest that Zarco ordered multiple terrorist acts aimed at creating instability during the election year.

Who is Zarco Aldinever?

According to both Semana and WRadio, he joined the FARC’s 53rd Front in 1991, when he was just 15 years old.

Years later, in 1998, he was promoted to second-in-command of the 53rd Front, where he was involved in the kidnapping of a mayor and two councilmen. He also allegedly took part in an attack that killed 40 soldiers in the municipality of Gutiérrez, Cundinamarca.

In the years that followed, his record includes murders, kidnappings, and forced disappearances, along with a series of promotions within the criminal organization.

According to local newspapers, he took part in the peace process as a member of the guerrillas’ new political party’s collective leadership. In 2019, he appeared in the founding video of the Segunda Marquetalia, in which the dissidents announced their return to armed struggle.

Until recently, El Zarco Aldinever was part of the negotiating table with the Petro government. However, El Espectador reported this Monday that the guerrilla leader has lost his status as a peace negotiator. According to Aldinever himself, he was appointed to this role in February 2024, but the process was ultimately derailed.

Links to Caquetá

Five people have been indicted for the crime. Several of them—including the underage hitman—have ties to the guerrillas, according to findings revealed by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office during interrogations, as reported by the magazine Semana.

The most recent detainee, Katherine Andrea Martínez, aka Gabriela, was reportedly arrested just as she was about to escape into the woods to find refuge with the guerrillas.

Martinez reportedly said that during a conversation with Elder Jose Arteaga, alias El Costeño—the person who allegedly commissioned the crime—he told her, "I had contact with the guerrillas, that I was not going to lack anything, that this was a camp in the bush, that just as there were guerrillas there were women, that I should not be scared, that he had already recommended me."

“He insisted that I leave [Bogotá] for Florencia, where I could study whatever I wanted. I asked him what I should or could study. He told me a drone course or a sniper course, saying these courses would be available with the guerrillas, but he didn’t specify which guerrilla group—whether it was FARC or another,” she added.

Gabriela was indeed captured in Caquetá. The newspaper notes that although she was promised shelter, it was “very likely” she would be killed or disappear. Due to the location, authorities doubt whether the guerrillas involved are actually another FARC dissident group operating there, rather than the Segunda Marquetalia.

The media outlet El Colombiano reports that Arteaga "would have been contacted by that dissident group" according to recent reports, and that he intended to "kill all his accomplices to leave no trace."

It also notes that 17 Facebook contacts were found on the 15-year-old hitman’s cell phone using guerrilla emblems as profile pictures, including portraits of leaders and individuals dressed in camouflage.