Colombia issues arrest warrants for rebel group members for Miguel Uribe killing

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s attorney general said Tuesday that his office has obtained arrest warrants for seven members of a rebel group known as Segunda Marquetalia for the killing of Miguel Uribe, a conservative presidential candidate who was shot in the head during a rally in Bogota in June 2025.

In a statement, Attorney General Luz Adriana Camargo said Uribe’s assassination last year was “the result of a structured criminal operation involving an urban criminal gang hired” by Segunda Marquetalia to kill the senator.

The attorney general said Uribe’s assassination was planned by Kendry Téllez, a Segunda Marquetalia member who previously fought for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the guerrilla group that signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016.

Luciano Marín, a former FARC commander who abandoned the peace deal and founded the Segunda Marquetalia group in 2018, was also accused of helping plan the assassination, carried out by a teenager hired by a gang in Bogota.

Marín, better known as Iván Márquez, was last seen in public in 2024, when Segunda Marquetalia and the administration of Colombian President Gustavo Petro launched peace talks.

Negotiations between Marín and the Colombian government were suspended at the end of 2024, following a schism within the Segunda Marquetalia.

Colombian prosecutors had long suggested that the rebel group was involved in Uribe’s assassination.

On Tuesday, officials announced a $1.3 million reward for information leading to Marín’s capture, as well as smaller rewards for information leading to the capture of the six other Segunda Marquetalia members accused of murder.

Uribe was speaking in a Bogota park on June 7, 2025, when he was shot multiple times by a teenager, who fled the scene but was quickly captured by Uribe’s bodyguards.

Uribe died two months later from his injuries.

Uribe’s killing marked a low point in Petro’s efforts to reduce crime in Colombia, where drug traffickers and rebel groups are fighting for control of territory abandoned by the FARC after the 2016 peace deal.

The attack on Uribe, a conservative who had promised to take a tougher stance against rebel groups, was the first assassination of a presidential candidate in Colombia in three decades.

Colombia will hold presidential elections in May. If none of the candidates obtains more than 50% of the votes, a second round will take place in June between the first two candidates.

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