Colombia’s President Ivan Duque surprised on Thursday, claiming that both FARC guerrillas and extradited drug traffickers have been planning to kill him.
In an interview with Semana columnist Vicky Davila, Duque said that dissident FARC chief “Gentil Duarte” and the extradited leaders of drug trafficking organization “Los Rastrojos” were plotting to kill him.
Duarte “would be looking for a terminally ill person and supposedly would want to approach me with explosives to carry out an attack,” Duque told the conservative pundit.
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According to the president, the extradited former bosses of Los Rastrojos were trying to buy an apartment below his own in an attempt to carry out a bomb attack.
The alleged plots were thwarted by the president’s security detail, Duque said.
I know that for them it is often difficult because I like to be in contact with citizens, I am in contact with the regions; and they have to take precautions when information like this arrives.
President Ivan Duque
The alleged assasination plot involving the extradited narcos is curious as their defense attorney is the fixer of the president’s political patron, former President Alvaro Uribe.
Furthermore, evidence indicates that Duque’s security detail and the Rastrojos helped Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido cross the border in February to lead a failed attempt to force American aid trucks into the neighboring country.
That aside, “the day you have to die, you die,” the president said.
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Duque did not indicate why Duarte or the former Rastrojos chief would want to kill him.
The last time an illegal armed group carried out a confirmed assassination attempt against a president was in 2005 when the FARC, the former guerrilla group that is now a political party, tried to kill Duque’s political patron in the city of Neiva.
