Colombian authorities identified a “peace negotiator” with the Marxist FARC terrorist group as one of the presumptive masterminds behind the assassination attempt against conservative Senator Miguel Uribe, the newspaper El Tiempo reported this week, adding that the government stripped him of his designation.
According to El Tiempo, FARC commander José Aldinever Sierra Sabogal, who goes by the alias “Zarco Aldinever,” is believed to have organized the attack from within Venezuelan territory. Far-left President Gustavo Petro reportedly stripped Sierra Sabogal of his “peace negotiator” status last week amid the ongoing investigations — a special designation Petro originally conferred upon the FARC member last year as part of a series of failed peace talks with the terrorist group.
Sierra Sabogal is believed to have joined FARC in 1991 at the age of 15 and participated in several terrorist plots throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Reports identified him as being involved in attacks against local police, kidnappings of elected officials, deadly attacks against the Colombian military, and attacks against public infrastructure. He reportedly grew to become a trusted man of FARC leader Luciano Marín Arango, who goes by the alias “Iván Márquez.”
Throughout his extensive, three-decade-long tenure in FARC, Sierra Sabogal became one of the top commanders of FARC’s Eastern Bloc, tasked with ensuring financing through drug trafficking and other related illicit activities. According to reports, Sierra Sabogal once represented the Eastern Bloc in FARC’s Central Command.
In February 2024, the government of President Petro conferred the status of “peace negotiator” on Sierra Sabogal and several other FARC members during failed peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC’s Second Marquetalia group, led by “Iván Marquez.”
FARC, a Marxist terrorist group founded in 1966, claims that it “abandoned terrorism” and “demobilized” as a result of purported “peace talks” held in 2016 with the government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. In exchange, FARC’s leadership received generous benefits such as legal immunity and uncontested parliamentary seats. However, FARC remains presently active as a terrorist organization in Colombia. The Colombian government and mainstream media have insisted over the past years that FARC’s active forces are a “dissident” faction and that the “true” FARC is the leadership in Bogotá.
Sierra Sabogal reportedly participated in FARC’s “reincorporation” process and occupied a position in FARC’s political party in 2017, serving as “Coordinator of the Territorial Training and Reintegration Space” until he abandoned the position in 2018. He publicly resurfaced again in a Second Marquetalia video in 2019.
The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, citing high-level judicial sources, reported on July 10 that authorities identified “peace negotiator” Sierra Sabogal as one of the presumptive masterminds behind the assassination attempt on Sen. Uribe.
In June, the conservative senator and presidential hopeful was shot by a teenage boy between the ages of 14 and 15 during a rally in a neighborhood of the capital city of Bogotá, receiving two gunshot wounds to the head and one to the left leg. Since then, Uribe has remained unconscious, fighting for his life at a local health center. While Uribe has shown a favorable and stable clinical response in recent days, his neurological prognosis remains reserved as of Monday, July 14.
El Tiempo, and several other Colombian outlets, reported on Monday that Petro signed a resolution on July 9 revoking Sierra Sabogal’s “peace negotiator” status on the grounds that two Second Marquetalia blocs “splintered” from the group in November 2024 amid the failed negotiations.
According to intelligence reports cited by El Tiempo, Sierra Sabogal is allegedly ordering terrorist actions from Venezuela, seeking to destabilize the Colombian political landscape in a key year for electoral decisions, as the South American nation is slated to hold new general elections in 2026. Venezuela, where Sierra Sabogal is believed to be operating, is ruled by the authoritarian socialist regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro, who has a long track record of friendly ties (originally established by Maduro’s predecessor, late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez) with the Marxist FARC group.
Unnamed sources claimed to El Tiempo that the attack against Sen. Uribe was not directly carried out by the Second Marquetalia but rather, by “dispersion.”
The newspaper further reported that, although authorities have not yet confirmed the exact motive for the attack against Uribe, intelligence sources are working on two possible hypotheses. The first, El Tiempo detailed, states that the attack on Sen. Uribe was due to his conservative political beliefs and his stance against illegal armed groups, while the other hypothesis states that his visibility as a presidential candidate made him a “symbolic target” for groups “seeking to generate fear and anxiety.”
El Tiempo reported:
The truth is that the attack on Senator Uribe marks a worrying return to the days when politics and terrorism frequently intersected, and confirms that some dissident groups within the FARC, far from weakening, are becoming more sophisticated in their urban operations.
Sen. Uribe’s mother, Diana Turbay, was a Colombian journalist and daughter of former President Julio César Turbay. She was killed in 1991 in a failed rescue attempt after late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar ordered her kidnapping.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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