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The Colombian senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay passed away this Monday at the age of 39, after being in critical condition for more than two months due to the attack he suffered on June 7 in Bogotá.
The politician, from the right-wing party Centro Democrático, was shot multiple times while speaking at a campaign event in the Modelia neighborhood, located in the western part of the capital.
Uribe Turbay, son of the murdered journalist Diana Turbay and grandson of former president Julio César Turbay Ayala, died at the Santa Fe Foundation, where he was admitted on the same day of the attack. According to the medical report, his condition worsened in the last hours due to an intracerebral hemorrhage and persistent edema.
President Gustavo Petro expressed his sorrow over the death and called for an end to political violence in Colombia. "Revenge is not the path," he wrote on X. Other leaders, such as former presidents Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Iván Duque, also voiced their condolences, describing the assassination as a blow to hope and democracy.
The authorities immediately captured a 14-year-old minor as the material author and have detained four other suspects. The main hypothesis points to the involvement of the dissidence of the FARC known as Segunda Marquetalia, although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The death of Uribe Turbay revives memories of the political assassinations that shook the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when several presidential candidates were killed. The Bogotá Mayor's Office declared three days of mourning.
Uribe Turbay, a lawyer from the Universidad de Los Andes with a master's degree from Harvard, began his political career as a councilor in Bogotá in 2012 and served as Secretary of Government for the capital from 2016 to 2018. In the Senate, he stood out as a critic of Petro's total peace policy and a defender of security and institutions.
The senator leaves behind his wife, María Claudia Tarazona, three stepdaughters, and a four-year-old son. His family, along with thousands of Colombians, demands justice for a crime that has shocked the nation and reignites the debate over violence against political leaders.
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