Tag: colombia

Arizona gun shop at center of plot to assassinate Colombian presidential candidate

The gun used by a teenager to shoot a Colombian presidential candidate was ‘acquired’ through an Arizona gun shop, law enforcement source has revealed Monday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told El Tiempo newspaper that Juan Sebastían Rodríguez Casallas, 14, shot Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay with a 9mm Glock what was bought on August 6, 2020.

The source also said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was also able to confirm that the weapon has been purchased at AJI Sporting Goods in Mesa.

In addition, the law enforcement agent told the outlet that the ATF was able to identify the name of the purchase, Charles Joe Anderson.

‘It is a model of Austrian origin, unusual in actions of this type within the country, which has activated protocols to track its arrival in the hands of the hitman,’ the official said.

Colombian National Police director, General Carlos Triana, said during a press conference Monday also confirmed that the weapon was legally purchased in Arizona and said investigators were looking into how the gun made its way to Colombia.

An ATF spokesperson told DailyMail.com that it could not confirm or deny the report.

AJI Sporting Goods owner, Jeff Serdy, told DailyMail.com that he had not been contacted by federal officials from Colombia and the United States as of Monday.

Serdy confirmed that Anderson acquired the weapon via a ‘transfer’ and that his gun shop received a $30 fee. 

‘For the record all state and federal laws were very strictly followed during this transaction,’ Serdy said. 

The gun was purchased from another store, whose name Serdy was unable to share. 

A 2024 Colombian National Police report showed that at least 3,954 guns that seized were made in the United States. Another 805 were manufactured in Italy and 414 were made in Germany.

Video footage showed Senator Uribe Turbay, who is planning to run in the 2026 presidential elections, addressing a crowd of about 250 residents Saturday afternoon in Fontibon, a neighborhood in the Colombia capital city of Bogotá.

Rodríguez Casallas could be seen standing several feet away from Uribe Turbay, who was starting to make his point about how his administration would combat mental illness, when he shot the lawmaker in the back of the head and fired about five more shots.

A surveillance video showed the teen shooter racing out of the park and running down a street as Uribe Turbay’s bodyguards chased after him.

A second video showed Rodríguez Casallas hobbling towards a gated residential complex and then turning around to aim his gun at the guards.

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An attempted assassination of senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe shakes Colombia and revives the ghosts of political violence.

This Saturday, June 7, 2025, an attack shook Colombia and reignited fears of a past marked by political violence and drug trafficking.

Senator and presidential pre-candidate for the Democratic Center party, Miguel Uribe Turbay, was shot in the head while attending a campaign event in the Fontibón district of Bogotá.

The incident, which left the politician in critical condition, has sparked a national debate about the country’s security and stability.

According to multiple media reports, the attack occurred around 5:00 p.m. at El Golfito Park, in the Modelia neighborhood of Bogotá, during a political event organized by the Democratic Center. Uribe, 39, was shot multiple times from behind by an armed individual.

Reports vary on the number of bullets fired, with sources citing between two and six shots—at least one of them hitting the head or neck.

Videos shared on social media capture the moment of panic following the shooting, showing Uribe covered in blood as he was rushed to Clínica Colombia.

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Conservative Colombian Presidential Candidate Uribe Shot In The Head In Bogota Event

Conservative Colombian senator Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot in the head on Saturday in an apparent assassination attempt. There was no immediate confirmation from the authorities on the status of his condition.

The 39-year-old senator is a member of the opposition conservative Democratic Center party, founded by former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The two men are not related.

According to a party statement condemning the attack, the senator was hosting a campaign event in a public park in the Fontibon neighborhood in the capital on Saturday when “armed subjects shot him in the back.”

The party described the attack as serious, but did not disclose further details on his health.

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Colombian woman sentenced in Florida to 20 years in prison for kidnapping, drugging two US soldiers in Bogotá

A Colombian national has been sentenced to over 20 years in federal prison for her role in the drugging, kidnapping, and robbery of two US military service members in Bogotá, Colombia.

Kenny Julieth Uribe Chiran, 35, was sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to 262 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $24,115 in restitution. In March 2025, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap internationally protected persons.

According to the US Justice Department, the incident occurred on the evening of March 5, 2020. The two US soldiers, on temporary duty in Bogotá, had visited a local pub in an entertainment district after watching a soccer match. There, Uribe Chiran and a co-conspirator approached them and secretly drugged their drinks with benzodiazepines. Once incapacitated, the soldiers were kidnapped, robbed of valuables and financial information, and later abandoned in separate locations across the city.

“Uribe Chiran and her co-defendants mercilessly preyed on US soldiers when they drugged their drinks, stole their valuables, and left them incapacitated on the street,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Kidnapping and assaulting two US military service members is deplorable, and the Criminal Division will continue to prioritize protecting our service members through these prosecutions.”

US Attorney Hayden P. O’Byrne for the Southern District of Florida echoed that sentiment: “Kidnappings and assaults against US service members will not be tolerated. To those who would dare commit such reprehensible acts against America’s heroes, know this: We will identify you; we will find you; and we will prosecute you as aggressively as the law permits.”

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Colombia seizes nearly 49 tonnes of China-bound smartphone mineral

Colombian police said Wednesday they had seized nearly 49 tonnes of tin and coltan, a mineral used in smartphones, that had been illicitly extracted by leftist rebels and readied for shipment to China.

They valued the seizure, one of the biggest of illegally mined coltan in Colombia in years, at US$1.2 million.

The police said the minerals, which are mined together, were extracted by dissident members of the now-defunct rebel Farc army in the jungle near the Venezuelan border.

The shipment seized in the city of Villavicencio came from illegal mines in the remote eastern departments of Guainia and Vichada.

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CIA Analysis of HVCA 2592 Suggesting Hitler Survived World War II and Lived in Colombia

A previously released classified document from 1954 is making the rounds again on the internet after its release years ago. The document claims Adolf Hitler survived World War II and was living in South America.

The document was the CIA’s response to the allegations that Hitler was living in Colombia and had been for several years.

Here is the full document Analysis of Document HVCA 2592 Suggesting Hitler Survived World War II.

In this document, the CIA responds to this explosive claim: The Acting Chief of the Station, Caracas, released a document where he alleges that a trusted friend delivered information that a former SS trooper stated to him casually that Adolf Hitler was still alive and living in Colombia.

The CIA document goes over the details of the claim that Hitler was still alive. Allegedly, an SS Officer traveled from Caracas to Colombia to see Hitler once per month.

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Colombian President Calls On Lawmakers To Legalize Marijuana To Combat Cartel Violence In The Illicit Market

The president of Colombia is calling on lawmakers to legalize marijuana in the country, arguing that prohibition “only brings violence” from cartels in the illicit market. And he’s also pushing other nations to legalize coca leaves for “for purposes other than cocaine.”

On Sunday, President Gustavo Petro warned in a social media post of the “multinationalization of the cocaine mafias,” claiming that there are more cartels today than before high-profile trafficker Pablo Escobar was caught and imprisoned.

“The empowerment of mafia organizations shows the failure of prohibition and the absence of alternative measures to simple prohibition,” the president said, according to a translation.

“My government will maintain full cooperation with all governments in the matter of confiscating cocaine,” he added. “And it has focused and will focus its action on large shipments and on high-ranking cocaine and money laundering bosses worldwide.”

Petro then said he’s asking the Colombian Congress to “legalize marijuana and remove violence from this crop.”

“The prohibition of marijuana in Colombia only brings violence,” he said.

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Colombian president calls for cocaine to be legalised worldwide and says it’s ‘no worse than whisky’

Colombia’s socialist president has said cocaine ‘is no worse than whisky’ and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America – as he called for the illicit drug to be legalised around the world. 

Colombia is the world’s biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe, and has spent decades fighting against drug trafficking. 

President Gustavo Petro’s remarks came during a live broadcast of a government meeting on Tuesday, in which he also claimed that cocaine is being scapegoated by American politicians. 

He stated that the illicit drug ‘is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky.’

‘Scientists have analyzed this. Cocaine is no worse than whisky,’ he added, suggesting that the global cocaine industry could be ‘easily dismantled’ if the drug were legalized worldwide.

‘If you want peace, you have to dismantle the business (of drug trafficking),’ he said.

‘It could easily be dismantled if they legalize cocaine in the world. It would be sold like wine.’

Petro also pointed out that fentanyl ‘is killing Americans and it is not made in Colombia’, referring to the opioid responsible for around 75,000 deaths in the United States a year, according to official data.

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Cocaine Outpaces Oil As Colombia’s Most Valuable Export

In a shocking development, Colombia’s cocaine production, for the 10th year straight, soared to a new record high. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the year’s annual output grew 52% year over year to a startling 2,664 metric tons, the largest amount ever produced. Despite the government in the capital Bogota, with U.S. backing, committing substantial resources to disrupt what is now an economically crucial illicit industry in rural Colombia coca cultivation and cocaine manufacturing keeps spiraling higher. The booming cocaine trade drives heightened insecurity and corruption which are damaging key economic sectors, notably the fiscally vital petroleum industry with oil Colombia’s most valuable export.

Since the 1990s, except for a brief period from 2011 to 2012, Colombia has consistently been the world’s leading cultivator of the coca plant. The bushy shrub’s alkaloid-rich leaves, long chewed by Indigenous South Americans to boost energy and ward off altitude sickness, are the vital precursor needed to manufacture the popular recreational narcotic cocaine hydrochloride which is widely consumed in developed nations around the world. The volume of cocaine produced is spiraling ever higher despite Colombia, since the 1980s, waging a multi-billion-dollar U.S.-backed war on drugs, 

This conflict not only failed to stem the flow of cocaine but prolonged Colombia’s civil war and cost hundreds of thousands of Colombians (Spanish), mostly civilians, their lives. There are multiple reasons for this, but the key is the weakness of the Colombian state which is exacerbated by Bogota being caught in a protracted country-wide multiparty asymmetric conflict rooted in inequality, Cold War politics and foreign interference. Colombia’s widespread poverty and lawlessness create favorable conditions for the growth of illicit economies, such as smuggling, thereby allowing the cocaine trade to take root.

While the cocaine business has existed since the early 1970s in Colombia, it was the formation of the Medellin and Cali Cartels toward the end of that decade that put the Andean country firmly on the global map as a leading cocaine exporter. The vast profits cocaine generates caught the attention of a multitude of illegal armed groups across Latin America including those waging a vicious decades-long civil war in Colombia. This led to a significant escalation in the conflict among cartels, leftist guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitaries, all vying for control of the lucrative billion-dollar illicit industry. These events sparked a vicious cycle of escalating violence, which fueled further lawlessness thereby perpetuating the conditions that allowed the cocaine trade to thrive.

Surprisingly, large-scale cultivation of the coca plant did not occur in Colombia when the Medellin Cartel was at the peak of its power during the 1980s. Estimates put the amount of coca being cultivated during the mid-1980s at a mere 32,000 acres or 13,000 hectares, roughly a twentieth of what it is today. Both the Medellin and Cali Cartels, at the time the world’s largest suppliers of the drug, relied upon coca paste imported from Bolivia and Peru to manufacture the cocaine they were shipping to the U.S. and Europe. This changed as other illegal armed groups, particularly rightwing paramilitary death squads and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials) entered the fray. 

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Hilarious: Leftist Doom Posts About Trump’s Columbia Spat Aged Like Rancid Milk

On Sunday, the socialist President of Colombia Gustavo Petro refused to let deportation planes departing the US land in his country and return hundreds of Columbian illegals that were rounded up by the Trump administration.

Petro accused Trump of treating “Colombian migrants as criminals,” and announced that he was refusing “entry of American planes carrying Colombian migrants” until the US has established “a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants.”

Trump immediately threatened tariffs and other sanctions.

The State Department outlined what would happen.

Within minutes, the Columbian President completely capitulated and backed down, agreeing to all Trump’s terms on taking back illegals.

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