Colombia arrests ‘intermediary’ in presidential hopeful’s murder

Above, a banner with an image of slain Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe and a Colombian national flag bearing a black ribbon in Bogota on Aug. 12, 2025. (AFP)

• Miguel Uribe, a favorite of the right for next year’s election, died from his wounds in August, several weeks after the attack

BOGOTA: Colombian prosecutors said Monday that police had arrested the “intermediary” in the murder of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe, who was gunned down in June.
Uribe, a favorite of the right for next year’s election, died from his wounds in August, several weeks after the attack.
The prosecutor’s office said Simeon Perez Marroquin, “the intermediary between the masterminds and the criminal group that carried out the attack,” had been arrested in Meta, in central Colombia.
He will be charged with “aggravated homicide, conspiracy to commit a crime, the use of minors for the commission of crimes, and illegal possession of firearms,” the office said on X.
Six others linked to the assassination are also in custody.
They include a 15-year-old boy sentenced to seven years in juvenile detention, and the driver who transported him to the site of the attack, who has received 21 years in prison.
The people who ordered and planned the killing have not yet been identified, but police have blamed a leftist guerrilla group.
Uribe’s killing echoed the worst years of political violence in Colombia in which five presidential candidates were gunned down in the 1980s and 1990s, as drug cartels and various armed groups terrorized the country.