TerrorismFoiled terrorist plot targeted Colombia's president

The Colombian government said that armed groups were plotting an attack against President Ivan Duque. The attorney general said the alleged scheme involved “a high-precision weapon.”

The Colombian authorities are investigating the militant plan to target Duque during a scheduled meeting with indigenous communities on Tuesday.

“We have reliable information that … some armed organized groups, which have infiltrated this social and indigenous movement, would like to carry out a terrorist act that could affect the safety of the president himself,” Attorney General Nestor Martinez said.

Members of the indigenous community have been protesting for weeks in the country’s southwest, calling on the government to help them protect their land and sovereignty rights.

Euronews reports that Tuesday’s planned meeting between Duque and indigenous representatives aimed to bring the demonstrations to an end. The government agreed on Saturday to invest more than $250 million in indigenous communities.

The protests came to be known as “minga” protests, seeing thousands of indigenous people blockading the Pan-American highway in the state of Cauca, leading to food and fuel shortages in some cities and costing the country millions.

The attorney general said authorities had launched a criminal investigation after intelligence gathered “several weeks ago” showed armed groups had infiltrated the minga movement. He did not say whether any alleged conspirators had been arrested.

The prosecutor added that authorities had “electronic evidence” and “testimony from reliable sources,” including information about “a high-precision weapon.”

Defense Minister Guillermo Botero told journalists early Tuesday that Duque’s meeting in the southwestern town of Caldono would go ahead, despite the uncovered plot, but that the location would be decided by the president’s security staff.

Separately, Duque suffered a political defeat when Colombia’s lower house on Monday rejected his proposed changes to a special tribunal tasked with trying former rebels and military officials for war crimes.

The tribunal was created to help implement the 2016 peace deal between the government and rebels from the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after five decades of conflict.

Duque’s political mentor is former president Alvaro Uribe, a bitter opponent of the government’s peace deal with FARC. Duque wanted to modify the court, complaining it is too lenient on former guerrillas. His proposed changes, which include toughening the rules on the sentencing of war crimes and facilitating the extradition of former rebels, are now unlikely to be approved. Duque won the election for the presidency by a comfortable margin, but in the parliamentary elections, held two months before the parliamentary election, his party’s performance was less impressive. As a result, his governing coalition holds fewer than half the seats in the lower house. Critics argued that Duque’s real plan was to derail the peace process, because he, Uribe, and their supporters believe it was too generous to the FARC.