BOGOTA – A Colombian senator was rescued from kidnappers Tuesday as the country’s president reported an attempt on his own life in the run-up to elections that observers have warned could be marred by violence.
Senator Aida Quilcue, an award-winning Indigenous activist, was taken by unknown people in her home department of Cauca, a conflict-ridden, coca-growing region fought over by dissidents of the now-disbanded FARC guerrilla army.
The 53-year-old was rescued by a group of Indigenous people, her team reported on X, hours after the vehicle she had been traveling in with two bodyguards was found abandoned.
“I’m OK now,” Quilcue said through tears in a video posted by Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez, which also showed her being bundled into an armored vehicle by members of Colombia’s military anti-kidnapping unit.
She later told AFP she had been taken by “various armed men,” without saying which group they belonged to.
“They took us out of the vehicle and then forced us to walk to an unknown location,” she said.
Noticing the Indigenous trackers on the hunt for them, the kidnappers “ran away,” Quilcue added, “and we were able to get away.”
President Gustavo Petro had earlier warned the kidnappers to release Quilcue or risk crossing “a red line.”
Petro on Tuesday claimed that he too had been targeted, escaping an assassination attempt after months of warnings about an alleged plot by drug traffickers against him.
On Monday night, his helicopter was unable to land at his destination on the Caribbean coast because of fears that unspecified people “were going to shoot” at it, the president reported.
