The frontrunner in Colombia’s election race, Senator Ivan Cepeda, said “state intelligence agencies” were behind a campaign to smear him.
In a video published on the social media platform X, Cepeda denounced an AI-generated recording in which the senator is heard saying that he was a member of the now-defunct guerrilla group FARC.
Cepeda said that he “received timely, credible information that I take very seriously regarding the fact that state intelligence agencies are carrying out such campaigns” to smear him.
An audio manipulated with artificial intelligence is circulating in which I supposedly say that I have been a militant of the Communist Party for 40 years and that I belong to the FARC. It is completely false. I have never been a militant of the FARC nor do I belong to them… This is a new manipulation to discredit me. I denounce this dirty campaign that comes from state intelligence agencies.
Ivan Cepeda
In June, the Senator and attorney Miguel Angel del Rio provided prosecutors with evidence suggesting that US intelligence officials were conspiring with people close to former President Alvaro Uribe to link them to drug trafficking guerrillas.
W Radio later published evidence which suggested that Uribe’s former fixer, Diego Cadena, had tried to recruit a low-level drug trafficker and federal agents to fabricate evidence against Cepeda and the prominent attorney.
Journalist Daniel Coronell published images suggesting that Cadena was talking with five US law enforcement officials in Bogota and Florida while conspiring to smear Cepeda.
The low-level drug trafficker claimed that he would be protected by a magistrate and someone “obviously from there, from New York or something like that.”
US officials implicated in alleged conspiracy to smear Uribe’s opponents in court
Both Cepeda and Del Rio played a major role in a fraud and bribery investigation against Uribe, the main political figure on the far-right in Colombia.
Preliminary election polls put the leftist Senator in the lead of the race to succeed outgoing President Gustavo Petro.
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