The 15-year-old shooter of Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe, who was attacked in June and died in August, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in juvenile detention.
The right-wing politician was shot in the head during a campaign event in Bogota by the teenager, who "must remain in a specialised care center for seven years, deprived of liberty," prosecutors said in a statement.
The teen was charged with attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons -- not homicide -- because Colombian law does not permit modifying charges after they've been accepted by a minor defendant.
Uribe, a 39-year-old opposition legislator, underwent multiple surgeries during two months in an intensive care unit in Bogota, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage on August 11.
The attack echoed the worst years of political violence in Colombia, where five presidential candidates were gunned down in the second half of the 20th century.
Videos of the June 7 attack show Uribe speaking at a rally in a working class neighborhood of Bogota before gunshots broke out. The bloodied candidate collapsed amid the screams of hundreds of supporters.
The minor shot Uribe three times, including twice in the head, before the candidate's bodyguards were able to wound and detain the shooter.
Five others -- all adults -- have been arrested and charged with aggravated homicide in connection to the attack.
Police have also pointed to a dissident wing of the defunct FARC guerrilla group as being behind the assassination.
In recent weeks, twin guerrilla attacks have killed 19 people in Colombia, with a truck bomb in Cali killing six and a drone attack on drug-mitigation operations that downed a police helicopter killing 13 officers.
President Gustavo Petro's leftist government blamed both attacks on guerrilla groups that split from the once-powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in rejection of a 2016 peace accord.
The teen shooter charged in Uribe's death will not be transferred to an adult prison after turning 18, a spokesperson for the prosecution told AFP.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Argentina's Milei pelted with stones on campaign trail amid corruption protests
Argentine President Javier Milei was pelted with stones by protesters near Buenos Aires on Wednesday while campaigning amid a corruption scandal, AFP reported. His motorcade was attacked but Milei was unhurt and swiftly evacuated by security, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on X.
Argentine President Javier Milei was pelted with stones while campaigning near the capital Buenos Aires on Wednesday by demonstrators protesting a corruption scandal, AFP reporters said.
Milei, who was whisked from the scene by his security detail, sustained no injuries after his motorcade was attacked, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni wrote on X.
Milei, who is campaigning for October mid-term elections, was riding in the back of a pickup truck and greeting his supporters in the city of Lomas de Zamora, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Buenos Aires, when protesters began throwing plants, rocks and bottles at his vehicle, AFP journalists at the scene confirmed.
I wonder how much they were paid?
The vehicle carrying the president and his sister, Karina Milei, along with other officials, hastily left the scene.
Afterwards, scuffles broke out between supporters and opponents of the libertarian leader. A female Milei supporter suffered rib injuries and was taken away by ambulance.
The skirmishes arose amid a scandal in Argentina over alleged corruption at the public disability agency involving Karina Milei, her brother's right-hand woman and presidential secretary.
Minutes beforehand, the president had addressed the scandal that erupted following the leak of audio recordings by the former head of the disability agency, Diego Spagnuolo.
In the recordings, Spagnuolo claimed that Karina Milei pocketed funds destined for people with disabilities.
"Everything (the agency head) says is a lie," President Milei said.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Argentina's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the fraud conviction of former president Cristina Kirchner, for which she received a six-year prison sentence and was banned for life from holding public office.
"The sentences handed down by the previous courts were based on the abundance of evidence produced," the Supreme Court wrote in its ruling, adding that Kirchner's leave to further appeal her conviction "is dismissed."
The ruling makes 72-year-old Kirchner's conviction and sentence definitive.
The decision brings the curtain down on the career of one of Argentina's most polarizing leaders, who has loomed large over the South American country's political landscape for two decades, inspiring admiration on the left but revulsion on the right.
Due to her age, she can potentially avoid jail by requesting to serve her sentence under house arrest.
Kirchner has five days to turn herself over to the authorities.
Her arch-foe, libertarian President Javier Milei, welcomed the ruling. "Justice. End," he wrote on X.
Kirchner was convicted in 2022 of fraudulent administration relating to the granting of public works tenders during her 2007-2015 presidency.
The case, she claims, is part of a political plot to scupper her career and unravel her legacy of protectionist economics and social programs.
She is the second ex-leader since Argentina's transition from dictatorship to democracy in 1983 to be sentenced to prison after Carlos Saul Menem, who was given a seven-year sentence in 2013 for weapons trafficking.
Menem never served jail time because he had immunity from prosecution as a senator.
Addressing hundreds of supporters outside the headquarters of her center-left Justicialist party, Kirchner called the three Supreme Court judges "puppets acting on orders from above" -- an apparent allusion to Milei's government.
Her supporters took to the streets of several Argentine cities, burning tires and cutting off some roads leading to Buenos Aires.
"The sentence was already written" before her appeal, Kirchner claimed, calling her conviction "a badge of political, personal and historical dignity."
Some in the crowd wept while others hugged each other.
Daniel Dragoni, a councillor from Kirchner's party, told AFP he was "destroyed" by the ruling but vowed the former president's left-wing Peronist movement "will return, as always."
Power couple
Revered and hated by Argentines in equal measures, Kirchner rose to prominence as part of a political power couple with her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president between 2003 and 2007.
After two terms at the helm herself between 2007 and 2015, she served as vice president from 2019 to 2023 in the last center-left administration before Milei took power.
Milei's election was seen as a widespread rejection of the Kirchners' left-wing nationalist Peronist movement, which was accused of widespread corruption and economic mismanagement.
Kirchner has been one of the biggest critics of Milei's deep cuts to public spending and deregulation.
Before Tuesday's ruling, she had been planning to run for a seat in the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in September elections.
Rosendo Fraga, a veteran political analyst, said he expected Kirchner's political clout to grow if she were detained.
But historian Sergio Berensztein said he believed the mobilization for her release would be short-lived.
"Cristina today has limited leadership; she is not the Cristina of 2019," he told AFP.
'In prison or dead'
The case against Kirchner relates to public works contracts awarded in her southern stronghold of Santa Cruz.
Kirchner is accused of arrange for dozens of contracts to be granted belonging to a business associate of herself and her late husband.
Read moreArgentina's Milei denies role in cryptocurrency scandal as government launches probe
Her sentence had already been upheld by a lower court of appeal in 2024.
The call by prosecutors for her to be jailed sparked demonstrations in several Argentine cities in August 2022, some of which ended in clashes with police.
In September 2022, she survived a botched assassination attempt when a man shoved a revolver in her face and pulled the trigger -- but the gun did not fire.
The gunman said that he acted out of revulsion for the "corrupt" Kirchner.
"They (her political opponents) want me in prison or dead," Kirchner herself has repeatedly claimed.
In March, the United States banned her and one of her former ministers from entering the country, accusing them of corruption.
But within Argentina's left the threat of Kirchner's arrest has led to a rare display of unity.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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