Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe shot in Bogota

Patricia Laya and Andreina Itriago, Bloomberg News on Jun 7, 2025

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Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot at a campaign event in Bogota on Saturday in an act reminiscent of the drug-fueled political violence that roiled the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The 39-year old senator from the opposition Democratic Center party was rushed to a medical center. He was stabilized there before being moved to a major hospital in north Bogota, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Footage posted by local media showed Uribe’s head and back covered in blood.

The gunman has been detained, Bogota Mayor Carlos Galan said on X. Attorney General Luz Camargo said that a 15-year-old youth was arrested, after being beaten up by members of the public, and that authorities captured a 9mm gun. The minor is currently in a medical center, she said.

At the peak of Colombia’s drug cartel terror in the 1980s and early 1990s, four Colombian presidential candidates were assassinated. Uribe’s own mother, the journalist Diana Turbay, was murdered by Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel in 1991.

Colombia holds presidential and congressional elections next year. President Gustavo Petro’s government condemned the shooting, and reiterated its commitment to the protection of all political leaders.

Uribe has called for a tough line against the illegal armed groups that control cocaine production, and has repeatedly warned that Colombia is backsliding into terror. Just two days before he was shot, he said in a speech in Cartagena that Colombia is being “dragged back to a past of violence.”

Uribe has attacked Petro’s policy of seeking “total peace” through negotiations with guerrillas and the private armies of drug traffickers. The talks have so far failed to yield major demobilizations, while the groups have taken advantage of the relative lack of military pressure to expand.

Uribe has also campaigned for a pro-business agenda, and opposes Petro’s attempts to increase the role of the state in the economy.

The grandson of former President Julio César Turbay, Uribe was educated at Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes and Harvard’s Kennedy School. He was campaigning in Fontibon, a neighborhood in west Bogota, when he was attacked.

“Violence can never be the way forward. I strongly condemn the attack against Miguel Uribe,” Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia said on X.

Uribe won more votes than any candidate for the senate in the 2022 elections. His mentor, former President Alvaro Uribe, to whom he is not related, defined him as a “hope for the motherland”, and said he was praying for his recovery.

In 2023, a presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was gunned down in neighboring Ecuador, where drug gangs have gained strength in recent years.