Woman arrested over alleged links to Colombia presidential candidate shooting
BOGOTA - A woman arrested Saturday in southern Colombia was suspected of being involved in the attempted murder of presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, police said.
Uribe, a 39-year-old conservative senator, was shot twice in the head and once in the leg while giving a speech in a park on June 7 in western Bogota.
The alleged shooter, a 15-year-old boy, and an accomplice who was accused of participating in the "logistics" of the attack had already been arrested.
On Saturday, a police source informed AFP of a woman suspected of having links to the attack who was arrested in the Amazon region of Caqueta.
"In the next few hours, they will transfer her to Bogota," the police source said, without providing further details.
The other two detainees, heavily guarded in a prosecutor's bunker, are accused of homicide and carrying weapons.
The minor, identified as the alleged gunman, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday.
According to a report Saturday in Colombian magazine Semana, he said he was offered 20 million pesos (more than $4,800) to kill the politician.
The newspaper El Tiempo also reported that one of the accused named a criminal who lives in Ecuador and controls a drug dealing area in Bogota as the alleged mastermind.
Uribe remained hospitalized in intensive care, though he showed some signs of improvement this past week, doctors said Wednesday.
President Gustavo Petro said the senator's improving health "cannot be explained by science."
"He should be dead... and what's happening is that he's recovering," Petro said Saturday.
Uribe's party, the opposition Democratic Center, temporarily suspended its campaign events for the 2026 presidential elections on Friday.
Uribe has been a strong critic of Petro, Colombia's first left-wing president, who sought in vain to make peace with the country's various remaining armed groups.
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