One of the main suspects in the assassination of far-right Senator Miguel Uribe spent time in prison for his role in the cover-up of the 1989 assassination of liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan.
The suspect, Simeon Perez, was arrested on Tuesday in Puerto Lleras, a municipality some 160 kilometers (99 miles) southeast of the capital Bogota, where Uribe was fatally shot on June 7.
In a statement, the prosecution said that Perez “would be the intermediary between the masterminds and the criminal group that carried out the attack” at a campaign event in western Bogota.
Perez and two co-conspirators was arrested inside Bogota’s La Modelo prison in 1994 for the killing of Omar Rueda and Luis Enrique Rueda, two Bogota Cartel sicarios who took part in the Galan assassination conspiracy.
The Galan hit was ordered by Gonzalo Rodriguez, a.k.a. “El Mexicano,” a boss of both the Medellin Cartel and the Bogota Cartel until his death in December of 1989.
According to newspaper El Tiempo, Perez was sentenced to 33 years in prison for the double homicide, but apparently released early and again implicated in high profile assassinations.
So far, the prosecutors have arrested eight members of the gang that coordinated and carried out the Uribe assassination and Perez, who would be able to tell who ordered the murder.
Members of Uribe’s Democratic Center party have blamed President Gustavo Petro’s “hate speech” for the assassination of their senate chief.
Petro has suggested that the Junta del Narcotrafico, the successor of the Bogota Cartel, was involved in the assassination.
The prosecution has yet to make any claims about who allegedly ordered the murder that plunged Colombia’s political elite into one of its biggest crises in recent history.
Related posts:
