This was the operation in which alias Uriel was discharged

On Sunday, October 25 in the afternoon, the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, announced that, in a military operation, Andrés Felipe Vanegas Londoño had been discharged, known by the alias of Uriel, the third commander of the Western War Front of the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Uriel was in the jungle area of ​​Chocó. His camp, according to the newspaper El Tiempo, had with satellite internet antenna and solar panels. In the same place, the authorities announced, they found three base radios with which Uriel communicated, two tablets, six computers, 16 cell phones, weapons, escape routes, 5.56 caliber ammunition and his personal passport.

Vanegas Londoño, who was accused of recruiting minors for the ELN, used to use social networks to contact young people who would later enlist in the ranks of the guerrilla organization.

The whereabouts of Uriel became known thanks to the investigations of the groups of special forces of the command of the Military Forces (CCOES-Joint Command of Special Operations) and the help of the population for what Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announced that the $ 500 million that the Government had offered will be delivered to anyone who collaborates with justice.

The dejected leader of the ELN was accused of various crimes, some of them even, according to the Government, perpetrated in the streets of Bogotá. It was Uriel himself who assured that ELN militants had participated in the destruction of the Immediate Attention Centers (CAI) in Capital during the September demonstrations and also their connection to the murder of 22 cadets at the Santander General School.

“It is not only through frontal armed harassment, in remote rural areas of the country, but through an urban war doctrine, founded on the recruitment of our youth, the strategic division of tasks and the organized instigation of violence, which attacks currently, Colombian democracy ”, said the Attorney General of the Nation Francisco Barbosa, a few days ago during his intervention in the online seminar Analysis and prevention of urban terrorism, organized by the Presidential Council for National Security.

According to information to which the newspaper El Tiempo had access, the camp in which he was Vanegas had a security ring of about 15 men, and the operation to find him began two months ago.

The situation, which complicated the entry of the men assigned by the Government to capture him, it was the existence of another camp separated from that first one at a distance of 20 kilometers.

According to one of the officers who participated in the operation, Uriel could be hiding in either of the two camps. However, The correct one was identified when trusted men of the guerrilla commander were seen by the authorities carrying food and supplies to one of the camps, with which the order was given to intervene in the place.

After Vanegas Londoño was killed, three field bags were found that, it is presumed, would be used by him and a woman with the alias Caro to flee before the ambush.

With Uriel’s death, everyone the electronic objects remain at the disposal of the competent authorities for the investigation of files or confidential documents of the ELN.

Iván Duque, in his speech to report Uriel’s death, defined it as “A dangerous criminal, responsible for crimes such as kidnapping, murder of social leaders, harassment of populations, murder of soldiers and police and stimulating the recruitment of minors.”

For the Military Forces, according to Noticias Caracol, Uriel’s death represents the rupture of the “expansion of an ideological model” among young people, particularly in Chocó where, according to the authorities, the leader led the “Juventudes del Chocó” movements with which he intended to attract minors to the ranks of that guerrilla.