Who is detained for the murder of Miguel Uribe Turbay in Colombia and what unknowns are to be resolved

“The Attorney General, Luz Adriana Camargo Garzón, deeply regrets the death of the presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay and expresses felt condolences to her relatives, relatives and followers,” said the Prosecutor's Office in X.

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, a few minutes after the attack on Uribe, a minor was arrested, considered a material author of the crime.

That was the starting point of an investigation for the authorities in which no hypothesis is ruled out and in which five other people were already arrested.

The next hours will be mourning and memories for Uribe Turbay, but in the following days the looks will be carefully fixed in the progress of the investigations, whose result can mark an agitated political and social landscape in the South American country.

To date, six people were arrested, including the minor accused of shooting the senator, whose identity is protected by the authorities.

“The District Government had already identified the conflict of the murderous child,” President Gustavo Petro in X said in June, revealing that the child had voluntarily abandoned an educational peace program in the past.

Since then there were five other arrests.

The most recent was that of Elder José Arteaga Hernández, aka 'Chipi' or 'El Costeño', whom the Prosecutor's Office considers one of the “brains” of the magnicide.

According to the Attorney General, Chipi allegedly took care of recruiting those involved in the attack and carrying out the planning of the commission.

According to General Carlos Fernando Triana, of the National Police, Chipi has a criminal history of more than 20 years.

After his capture, the Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez, said that said individual was the one who coordinated the logistics and operational details of the attack.

“This criminal, who would have received up to 1 billion pesos to articulate the network of hitmen and coordinate every detail of the attack, is already in the hands of justice,” said Sánchez.

The suspect was already known since the 2000s for crimes such as injuries, robberies, extortion and violence in Bogotá. The model was imprisoned in prison.

Although the intellectual author has not been identified, General Triana said in June in an interview with the week magazine that the group headed by Chipi was hired as “criminal outsourcing”, that is, a criminal group that performs salary operations.

Other detainees are Katerine Andrea Martínez, aka Gabriela, a 19 -year -old girl who would have provided the weapon to the teenager; William Fernando González Cruz, aka the old or brother, who was another of the logistics leaders of the attack; Carlos Eduardo Mora González, a Colombian-Venezuelan colomo identified as the driver of one of the vehicles used in the escape of those involved and Cristian Camilo González Ardila, of whom the Prosecutor's Office says that it should be responsible for guaranteeing the flight of the perpetrator.

No hypothesis about the motive and intellectual authors of crime is ruled out.

Since the attack, the Government, the Prosecutor's Office and the National Police have ruled on several of the lines of investigation.

A day after the attack, the Minister of Defense, Pedro Sánchez, announced that it was weighed if it had been an attack against the political figure that the senator represents, against his party, democratic center, or an attempt to “destabilize” the Petro government.

The president himself, in fact, attributed the crime then to “a revenge of drug trafficking organizations against his government for the blows that the public force has given them.”

On more than one occasion, Petro has referred to a “mafia” that pursues him and that also, supposedly, would have ordered the murder of Uribe Turbay, although he has not provided evidence in this regard and the authorities continue to consider other hypotheses.

The prosecution started the investigation pointing to an alleged network of hitmen.

In Bogotá, criminal networks formed by small bands and other more powerful and complex structures that make crimes such as theft, extortion and sale of drugs coexist.

Current criminal networks in several Colombian cities do not respond to a single hierarchical command, but many work under franchises or subcontractations that hinder the work of the authorities to find responsible.

Minors, as the main suspect of the attack, are frequent target of recruitments for sicariate and other crimes for their vulnerability and for legal gaps in the Colombian legal and criminal system to prosecute their cases.

Finding intellectual authors is key to finally determining whether the crime occurred for political or purely criminal reasons.

As revealed by a news report, the prosecutor who investigates one of the detainees said at an audience that the attack could have been “for being a senator and being developing political campaign as a candidate for the presidency.”

This is a hypothesis that has not been officially confirmed by the authorities.

Carlos Fernando Triana, of the National Police, said for his part that “in the framework of the investigation everything indicates that the second Marquetalia is part of this network in terms of the determinants, but that is under investigation.”

The second Marquetalia is one of the greatest dissidents of the FARC that resumed the weapons after the peace agreement between the government and this guerrillas in 2016.

Neither this armed group, nor any other, has attributed any link with the attack against Uribe Turbay.

Clearing the doubt of whether it was a political crime is key to Colombia.

Although the homicide rate in the country remains the highest in Latin America along with those of Brazil, Ecuador and Honduras, the numbers have improved substantially since the raw era of political and civil violence of the 80s and 90s.

In Colombia there is already talk of magnicide, which “would be the first in the country after 35 years,” says BBC Mundo Laura Bonilla, deputy director of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (peers).

Many in Colombia trusted that the recovery of Uribe Turbay, which at times seemed possible, would prevent the stigma of insecurity from taking over the country's political agenda, where in recent years issues such as the environment, health and labor rights gained greater prominence.

Now, analysts like Bonilla predict that “the political landscape will depend on who manages to capitalize on the narrative of security and hard hand.”

“It is a situation where right -wing speeches and referents are more recognized,” adds the expert.

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