Popayán (Colombia) (AFP) – A pro-government senator was kidnapped on Tuesday for a few hours in southwestern Colombia, and President Gustavo Petro reported that they tried to assassinate him, in a new spike in political violence in the middle of the electoral season.

First modification: 02/11/2026 - 12:07

Senator Aida Quilcué, an important indigenous leader and member of Petro's party, was kidnapped along with her two bodyguards in her department of Cauca, a conflictive and coca-growing region controlled by dissidents of the extinct FARC guerrilla who departed from the 2016 peace agreement.

About three and a half hours after his disappearance, the government reported that he was free and safe thanks to a rescue effort by a group of indigenous people who sometimes clash with rebels.

Quilcué was transferred to Popayán, capital of Cauca, in an armored army tank.

Upon arrival, the 53-year-old senator told AFP that "several armed men" intercepted the van in which she was traveling, without specifying which group they belonged to.

"They took us out of the vehicle and then took us on foot to an unknown location," he said.

Upon noticing the presence of the indigenous people who were looking for her, the kidnappers fled, he added. "They left us alone and ran away, so we left."

Threats against leaders, candidates and social leaders accumulate prior to the legislative elections on March 8 and the presidential elections on May 31.

"A war cry"

The Nasa indigenous people, to which Quilcué belongs, are strongly threatened by illegal groups.

The legislator from the Petro Historical Pact movement had already denounced an attack against her when she was running for the Senate in 2022.

Quilcué, usually dressed in red and green scarves and headbands, the distinctive colors of the Nasa people, is an important indigenous leader and winner of the national award for the defense of human rights in Colombia.

"Where they do not release her is a war cry against all the indigenous people of Cauca and the country," President Gustavo Petro had said when reporting her kidnapping.

In the midst of Petro's new policy of frontal war against armed groups, the country's largest cartel, known as the Gulf Clan, suspended the peace talks it was holding with the government in recent days.

The Colombian State's agreement with the FARC in 2016 alleviated political violence for a few years, but the next elections may be one of the most violent since then.

Petro threatened

"We took the open sea (for) four hours and I got to where we didn't have to go," "escaping being killed," the president said in a televised council of ministers.

The leftist has maintained for months that there is a drug trafficker's plan to assassinate him.

Hundreds of municipalities in Colombia are at risk of acts of electoral violence and pressure from armed groups seeking to influence the 2026 elections, according to the MOE, a platform of civil electoral observation organizations.

The guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) claimed responsibility for an attack against a senator's motorcade last week in Arauca, a border region with Venezuela, in which two bodyguards died. Legislator Jairo Castellanos was not traveling in the convoy.

The assassination of presidential candidate and right-wing senator Miguel Uribe, who died in August in a shooting attack that occurred two months earlier, revived the ghosts of drug violence against politicians in the 1980s and 1990s.

During the Petro government there have been at least four attacks against senators, including that of Miguel Uribe.

Petro, the first left-wing president in the country's history, denounced another alleged assassination attempt against him in Bogotá in 2024.

Colombia is one of the deadliest countries against human and environmental rights defenders. It also has a long list of assassinated left-wing leaders, including presidential candidates, by alliances between drug traffickers, paramilitary groups and state agents.

© 2026 AFP

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