Alejandro Éder, the mayor of Cali, asked last week when Colombia had gone back to 1989. On Saturday, 7 June, in Bogotá, a fourteen-year-old had shot Miguel Uribe Turbay, a senator and potential candidate for the presidency, in the head and chest. (It was apparently a contract hit: the boy had been offered $5000.) There were candlelit vigils throughout the country. Uribe Turbay, whose mother was kidnapped and murdered by Pablo Escobar in 1991, is in stable condition after surgery.
In the following days, there were car bomb, grenade and shooting attacks on police stations and municipal buildings in the country’s south-west that left at least seven dead (including a five-year-old and her grandfather) and fifty injured.
FARC ‘dissidents’ – rump groups of cocaine exporters in business with Mexican criminal organisations – have claimed responsibility. For Colombians old enough to remember, this latest round of deadly attacks recalls a nightmarish time marked by political murder, car bombs, and spiralling crime and violence in both urban and rural areas, committed both by and against the police and army.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/june/old-ghostsBut:
Colombian senator in 'extremely critical condition' after being shot
Doctors treating Colombian presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay have warned that he is in an "extremely critical condition" after being shot in the head 10 days ago.
Uribe underwent emergency surgery on Monday to stem a bleed to the brain, according to a hospital statement.
His wife said that the hours after the operation would be critical and asked Colombians to pray for his recovery.
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A man accused of providing the shooter with the gun has also been detained as well as a woman suspected of providing "logistical support" for the attack.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j1lr3nlggo(The BBC has the shooter as 15, not 14)
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