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BOGOTA: Colombia buried murdered presidential candidate Miguel Uribe on Wednesday, with his widow tearfully warning that the country must shake its dark and long history of political violence.
The 39-year-old conservative senator was shot in June while campaigning in the capital, Bogota, and died this week of his injuries.
“Our country is going through the darkest, saddest, and most painful days,” Maria Claudia Tarazona told a packed cathedral funeral service as she prepared to bury her husband.
Police have blamed Uribe’s murder on left-wing guerrillas who shunned 2016 peace accords. Six people have been arrested in connection with the alleged plot.
For most Colombians, the assassination represented a shocking spasm of political violence after years of relative peace.
Four presidential candidates were assassinated during the 1980s and 1990s, as drug cartels and various armed groups terrorized the country.
Uribe’s own mother, journalist Diana Turbay, was killed in a botched 1991 police operation to free her from cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel.
On Wednesday Uribe’s father, Miguel Uribe Londono, remembered the day 34 years ago when she was killed.
“With all the pain in my soul, I had to tell a little boy of barely four years old the horrendous news of his mother’s murder,” he said at the service.
“In this same holy cathedral, I carried Miguel in one arm and the coffin of his mother, Diana, in the other.”
“Today, 34 years later, this senseless violence also takes from me that same little boy,” he said.
As Colombia reels from the assassination, conservative lawmaker Julio Cesar Triana, a vocal critic of the government, escaped unharmed after his vehicle came under fire in the southern Huila region where dissident members of the defunct FARC guerrilla group are operating.

Uribe’s wife vowed at the funeral that his death at the hands of a suspected 15-year-old hitman would not be in vain, and that his young son and stepdaughters would live a life filled with love.
“Miguel, I will love you every day of my life until my time comes to meet you in heaven,” she said.
“I promise to give Alejandro and the girls a life full of love and happiness, without hatred and without resentment.”
Colombia will hold elections in 2026 to replace incumbent leftist leader Gustavo Petro, who is constitutionally barred from running again.
President Petro, himself a former guerrilla, said he chose not to attend Wednesday’s funeral at the family’s request.
“We’re not going, not because we didn’t want to,” he posted on social media. “We simply respect the family and we avoid the funeral of Senator Miguel Uribe from being taken over by supporters of hate.”
It was expected that some of those marking their respects may have booed the president, who has taken a conciliatory approach to armed groups.
That stance has been strongly criticized by those on the right wing of Colombian politics.
Former presidents Juan Manuel Santos, Ernesto Samper, and Cesar Gaviria attended the funeral.

WASHINGTON: Residents in one Washington, D.C., neighborhood lined up Wednesday to protest the increased police presence after the White House said the number of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital would ramp up and federal officers would be the streets around the clock.
After law enforcement set up a vehicle checkpoint along the busy 14th Street Northwest corridor, hecklers shouted, “Go home, fascists” and other insults. Some protesters stood at the intersection before the checkpoint and urged drivers to turn away from it.
The action intensified a few days after President Donald Trump’s unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the city’s police department for at least a month.
The city’s Democratic mayor walked a political tightrope, referring to the takeover as an “authoritarian push” at one point and later framing the infusion of officers as boost to public safety, though one with few specific barometers for success. The Republican president has said crime in the city was at emergency levels that only such federal intervention could fix — even as District of Columbia leaders pointed to statistics showing violent crime at a 30-year low after a sharp rise two years ago.
For two days, small groups of federal officers have been visible in scattered areas of the city. But a significant increase was expected Wednesday at the Guard’s armory and troops were expected to start doing more missions in Washington on Thursday, according to a Guard spokesman who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the planning process.
On Wednesday, agents from Homeland Security Investigations patrolled the popular U Street corridor. Drug Enforcement Administration officers were seen on the National Mall, while National Guard members were parked nearby. DEA agents also joined Metropolitan Police Department officers on patrol in the Navy Yard neighborhood, while FBI agents stood along the heavily trafficked Massachusetts Avenue.

Hundreds of federal law enforcement and city police officers who patrolled the streets Tuesday night made 43 arrests, compared with about two dozen the night before.
D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson downplayed the arrest reports as “a bunch of traffic stops” and said the administration was seeking to disguise how unnecessary this federal intervention is.
“I’m looking at this list of arrests and they sound like a normal Saturday night in any big city,” said Henderson.

Unlike in other US states and cities, the law gives Trump the power to take over Washington’s police for up to 30 days. Extending his power over the city for longer would require approval from Congress, and that could be tough in the face of Democratic resistance.
Trump suggested that he could seek a longer period of control or decide to call on Congress to exercise authority over city laws his administration sees as lax on crime. “We’re gonna do this very quickly. But we’re gonna want extensions. I don’t want to call a national emergency. If I have to, I will,” he said.
Later, on his Truth Social site, Trump reiterated his claims about the city, writing, “D.C. has been under siege from thugs and killers, but now, D.C. is back under Federal Control where it belongs.”
Henderson, who worked for Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York before running for the D.C. Council, said she was already in touch with “friends on the Hill” to rally opposition for any Trump extension request. She added, “It’s Day Three and he’s already saying he’s going to need more time?”
Targeting a variety of infractions

The arrests made by 1,450 federal and local officers across the city included those for suspicion of driving under the influence and unlawful entry, as well as a warrant for assault with a deadly weapon, according to the White House. Seven illegal firearms were seized.
There have now been more than 100 arrests since Trump began beefing up the federal law enforcement presence in Washington last week, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said. “President Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to clean up this city and restore American Greatness to our cherished capital,” she said.

The president has full command of the National Guard and has activated up to 800 troops to support law enforcement, though exactly what form remains to be determined.
Neither Army nor District of Columbia National Guard officials have been able to describe the training backgrounds of the troops who have so far reported for duty.
While some members are military police, others likely hold jobs that would have offered them little training in dealing with civilians or law enforcement.
The federalization push also includes clearing out encampments for people who are homeless, Trump has said. US Park Police have removed dozens of tents since March, and plan to take out two more this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said. People are offered the chance to go to shelters and get addiction treatment, if needed, but those who refuse could be fined or jailed, she said.
City officials said they are making more shelter space available and increasing their outreach.
Violent crime has dropped in the district
The federal effort comes even after a drop in violent crime in the nation’s capital, a trend that experts have seen in cities across the US since an increase during the coronavirus pandemic.

On average, the level of violence Washington remains mostly higher than averages in three dozen cities analyzed by the nonprofit Council on Criminal Justice, said the group’s president and CEO, Adam Gelb.
Police Chief Pamela Smith said during an interview with the local Fox affiliate that the city’s Metro Police Department has been down nearly 800 officers. She said the increased number of federal agents on the streets would help fill that gap, at least for now.
Mayor Muriel Bowser said city officials did not get any specific goals for the surge during a meeting with Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, and other top federal law enforcement officials Tuesday. But, she said, “I think they regard it as a success to have more presence and take more guns off the street, and we do too.”
She had previously called Trump’s moves “unsettling and unprecedented” while pointing out he was within a president’s legal rights regarding the district, which is the seat of American government but is not a state.
For some residents, the increased presence of law enforcement and National Guard troops is nerve-racking.
“I’ve seen them right here at the subway ... they had my street where I live at blocked off yesterday, actually,” Washington native Sheina Taylor said. “It’s more fearful now because even though you’re a law-abiding citizen, here in D.C., you don’t know, especially because I’m African American.”
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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Konstantin Toropin and Will Weissert, photographer Jacquelyn Martin and video journalist River Zhang contributed to this report.