Former President Alvaro Uribe said Sunday that one of his party’s leaders has been assassinated. The police, however, denied the victim had anything to do with politics.
The victim, Edison Blanco, was the chairman of the Democratic Center party in the town of El Bagre, according to the party’s leader, former President Alvaro Uribe, until at 8PM Saturday an unknown suspect entered the victim’s home and shot him with a gun.
Uribe, who has become the leader of the conservative opposition since leaving office in 2010, took to Twitter early Sunday morning to announce the death of his party’s leader in El Bagre, claiming “the pain mounts” after several political assassinations.
Contradicting the claims by Uribe and his party, Antioquia Police Commander Colonel Ramiro Riveros said the “victim was a businessman without any relations to political parties.”
“At the moment they are making inquiries at the scene with facts and with relatives and neighbors. We are not ruling out hypotheses, but there is still no precise data,” the police commander told media.
El Bagre is located in the Bajo Cauca region, which is rich in both gold and coca, the crop used to make cocaine. Both guerrilla groups like the FARC and paramilitary group Urabeños are highly active in the area.
Because of the illegal activity going on in the town, El Bagre has one of the highest homicide rates in Antioquia, which in turn has one of the highest homicide rates in Colombia.