“We flew for hours to escape being killed”: The President of Colombia survived an assassination attempt

Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced that he had survived an assassination attempt on Tuesday evening, after receiving security warnings for months about an alleged conspiracy behind drug trafficking networks targeting him personally.

“Petro” explained that his helicopter was unable to land on Monday night at its scheduled destination on the Caribbean coast, after discovering real risks of being exposed to gunfire. In a government meeting that was broadcast live, he said: “We headed out to sea for 4 hours, and arrived at a place we did not intend to go, to escape being killed.”

This development comes in the wake of repeated warnings issued by Petro since he took office in 2022, in which he talked about plans to assassinate him, stressing that direct threats have been targeting him since his arrival to the presidency.

The president’s statements coincided with the temporary disappearance of Aboriginal Senator Ida Kilcoy, who was politically close to him, which prompted him to warn that the country was entering “a new phase of political uncertainty,” adding: “This puts me on alert.”

These developments come at a time when Colombia is witnessing an escalation in violence, months before the presidential elections scheduled for next May, in a country that has been suffering for decades from a bloody conflict between rebels, armed groups, and drug gangs.

Petro, who is prohibited by the constitution from running for a second term, said that a drug trafficking gang has been seeking to assassinate him since he took office in August 2022. Among those allegedly involved was Ivan Mordesco, a leader of a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who rejected the peace agreement signed with the authorities in 2016.

It should be noted that Colombia has witnessed, in recent decades, the assassination of a number of leftist leaders, including presidential candidates, while Petro – the first leftist president in the country’s history – previously announced in 2024 that he had survived a similar assassination attempt.