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BOGOTA: Colombian prosecutors said Monday that police had arrested the “intermediary” in the murder of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe, who was gunned down in June.
Uribe, a favorite of the right for next year’s election, died from his wounds in August, several weeks after the attack.
The prosecutor’s office said Simeon Perez Marroquin, “the intermediary between the masterminds and the criminal group that carried out the attack,” had been arrested in Meta, in central Colombia.
He will be charged with “aggravated homicide, conspiracy to commit a crime, the use of minors for the commission of crimes, and illegal possession of firearms,” the office said on X.
Six others linked to the assassination are also in custody.
They include a 15-year-old boy sentenced to seven years in juvenile detention, and the driver who transported him to the site of the attack, who has received 21 years in prison.
The people who ordered and planned the killing have not yet been identified, but police have blamed a leftist guerrilla group.
Uribe’s killing echoed the worst years of political violence in Colombia in which five presidential candidates were gunned down in the 1980s and 1990s, as drug cartels and various armed groups terrorized the country.

HUE, Vietnam: Thousands of people in Vietnam were evacuated from their homes after record rainfall of more than one meter in 24 hours submerged a central city, the environment ministry said Tuesday.
Three measuring stations in the city of Hue recorded rainfall from one meter to 1.7 meters (five feet seven inches) in a 24-hour period from Sunday to Monday, the ministry said in a statement.
The previous 24-hour rain record was 0.99 meters, set in Hue in 1999, it said.
Heavy rainfall has inundated Vietnam’s central coastal region since the weekend, closing schools and flooding the former imperial city of Hue, a UNESCO world heritage site.
More than 8,600 people in four central provinces were evacuated to schools and other public buildings since Saturday due to risks from severe flooding and landslides, according to the environment ministry.
“This was the biggest flood I have experienced, with water levels in my house about 40 centimeters higher than that of 1999,” said 56-year-old Hue resident Tran Anh Tuan.
“My ground floor is under about two meters of floodwaters. We had moved all essential furniture upstairs. We have been in the dark over a day as power was cut off,” Tuan said from his three-story house in central Hue.
An image published by state media on Monday showed a room in a main hospital in the city flooded with murky water and two patients seated on gurneys.
Tourists in ancient Hoi An town were pictured in state media navigating narrow streets in boats while AFP journalists saw authorities evacuate several people from heavily flooded areas.
“The level of natural disaster risk due to flash floods and landslides is at the highest level,” said Mai Van Khiem, director of the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting, according to a government website.
More rain was forecast for the central provinces into Wednesday, he added.
Some schools were closed in the cities of Hue and Danang beginning Saturday while the railway linking the country’s north and south saw delays due to flooding.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is making extreme weather events like storms and floods more deadly and destructive.
Vietnam’s mountainous north and capital Hanoi were under severe flooding in early October following typhoons Bualoi and Matmo.
Natural disasters, mostly storms, floods and landslides, left 187 people dead or missing in the Southeast Asian nation in the first nine months of this year.
Total economic losses were estimated at more than $610 million, the General Statistics Office said.