President Duque confirms that after an operation alias ‘Uriel’, one of the leaders of the ELN, was dismissed

This Sunday afternoon, from Quibdó, Chocó, to the southwest of Colombia, President Iván Duque confirmed the death of Andrés Felipe Vanegas Londoño, known as alias ‘Pedro’ or ‘Uriel’, the third head of the Western War Front of the Army of National Liberation, with a strong presence in that department.

“One of the most visible figures of that terrorist organization has fallen, a criminal who used the networks to apologize for crime”Duque assured. The blow is considerable for the Public Force, since ‘Uriel’ is blamed for the attack on the Cadet School at the beginning of 2019, in Bogotá.

The president described him as “a dangerous criminal, responsible for crimes such as kidnapping, assassination of social leaders, harassment of populations, murder of soldiers and police, and stimulating the recruitment of minors.”

A delegation that integrates the Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa; the defense minister, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, and the Dome of the Military and Police Forces, is present in Chocó. The general Luis Fernando Navarro, Commander of the Colombian Military Forces expressed his determination to continue closing the space to the ELN terrorists. “We will continue to fight terrorist groups with all the legitimate force of the State because Colombians have the right to live in peace,” he said.

For his part, the prosecutor Barbosa He indicated that ‘Uriel’ was being followed up, for whom he had an arrest warrant for the crimes of rebellion and terrorism. With that arrest warrant, the authorities mobilized to Nóvita, Chocó, and there, without being able to carry out the diligence due to the clashes, ‘Uriel’ was killed.

Who was uriel

According to the president, ‘Uriel ‘ He was responsible for kidnappings, murders and recruitment of minors, and he was one of the organizers of the car bomb attack carried out in January 2019 against a cadet school in Bogotá, which left 22 victims, in addition to the attacker.

As a result of that attack, Duque buried the peace talks initiated with the ELN by his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos.

At the same event this Sunday, the attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, specified that the death occurred during “a confrontation” with the public force in the jungle municipality of Nóvita, within the framework of the Odín operation, in which the military, police and prosecutors participated.

Constantly active in social networks, Uriel He was one of the most media figures of the generational change in the ELN, an organization that emerged in 1964, in the middle of the Cold War, and led by guerrillas with an average age of 68 years.

El Chocó, where it operated, is the epicenter of a territorial dispute between the ELN and the Clan del Golfo, the country’s largest drug trafficking gang that arose from demobilized far-right paramilitaries in 2006.

It is also one of the strategic exit points for cocaine shipments that leave the Colombian Pacific for Central America and the United States. As well as an enclave of illegal gold mining, whose revenues, according to the prosecution, exceed those of drug trafficking.

Recognized as the last guerrilla in the country after the peace agreement that led to the disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the ELN has some 2,300 combatants in the country and an extensive urban support network.

The rebel organization operates in 12% of the 1,100 Colombian municipalities, according to independent investigations, and the Colombian public force affirms that it has a presence in Venezuela.

News in development …

With information from AFP