Miguel Uribe Londoño, father of slain conservative Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, revealed this week that Colombia’s Institute of Forensic Medicine “destroyed” his son’s body, which prevented his family from holding an open casket funeral for the late Senator as they had intended.
The grieving father said that the tragic murder of his son put his Catholic faith to the test, but that he remains a steadfast believer in God.
Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, 39 at the time of his death, was a member of Colombia’s conservative Democratic Center party and was the leading presidential candidate hopeful ahead of next year’s elections before his assassination.
On June 7, a boy of 14 or 15 shot Uribe during a campaign rally in Bogotá, causing two gunshot wounds to the skull and one on his leg. Uribe fought for his life in extremely critical condition at a local Intensive Care Unit for weeks until he passed away in August. Ongoing investigations from Colombian authorities determined that the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist group was involved in the plan to murder the conservative senator.
His father, Miguel Uribe Londoño, who also served as a Senator in the 1990s, took up Sen. Uribe’s campaign banner and is presently running as one of the Democratic Center’s five candidates in the conservative party’s November 28 presidential primary election.
Uribe Londoño spoke with the Colombian podcast Vamos pa’ eso (“Let’s do it”) on Wednesday and shared intimate details on the grieving process following the death of his son. Uribe Londoño denounced in the roughly one-hour interview that Sen. Uribe’s body was subjected to “grotesque” handling by Colombia’s Forensic Medicine, which “destroyed” his son’s body to the point that “there was nothing left to do” with it. The damage prevented him and his family from conducting open casket funeral rites and saying goodbye to the senator as the family wanted due to the condition in which the body was returned after forensic procedures.
Uribe Londoño told the interviewer, “I can’t tell you what I saw. It was terrible. In this case, it’s the worst scene of all. That’s why we had to close the coffin.”
“I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to hold his hand. The thing is, we couldn’t display his body because they forced us to take Miguel to the coroner’s office. And at the coroner’s office, they destroyed his body. It was grotesque,” he said.
“That shouldn’t have happened. There was no reason for it to happen. There was nothing left to do. They should have simply complied with the formality of receiving him and returning him. I can’t tell you what I saw. It was terrible. In this case, it was the worst scene of all. That’s why we had to close the coffin,” he continued.
Sen. Uribe’s assassination marked the second time Miguel Uribe Londoño has experienced a tragedy through political violence in Colombia. His wife, journalist Diana Turbay, was the daughter of former Colombian President Julio César Turbay. Diana Turbay was killed in 1991 during a failed rescue attempt after late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar ordered her kidnapping. Sen. Uribe was five years old when his mother was killed. His son Alejandro is four years old.
Uribe Londoño confided to the podcast that his Catholic faith was put to the test over the death of his wife and son, and said, “I am Catholic, I believe in God. It is very difficult for me, having gone through two tragedies that I have had to live through, but I decided that I was not going to reexamine my beliefs.”
“The things that happen are God’s will. I have no explanation for why I have had to live through what I have had to live through, but I continue to cling to God and walk with God every day so that He will protect me, because I know that I am in danger,” he said.
“The day he died, when I was leaning over Miguel’s coffin, what I was asking for, what I was thinking, was that I wanted to be in that coffin with Miguel,” he recounted at another point of the interview. “That’s where I belong. I have no more life. I’ve lost the will to live. I lived for him. The pain is immense. It will stay with me until the end of my days.”
During the podcast, Uribe Londoño accused far-left President Gustavo Petro of being “politically responsible” for his son’s death, and recounted instances in which Petro “relentlessly” harassed the late senator. Uribe Londoño said that the security detail that Colombian authorities provided to his son was insufficient when compared to that of other candidates and explained that he documented the lack of security provided before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, stressing, “It was a fact that Petro did not want to give Miguel protection.”
“Petro celebrated Miguel’s death. Petro harassed him relentlessly. Petro would say, ‘Miguel is the grandson of a president who tortured 10,000 people,’ using that kind of violent language. What is happening? Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay must disappear, and those are two tweets out of 40 that are documented and are with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,” he said. “Miguel knew he was in danger, but … we had no way to provide him with greater security.”
Uribe Londoño reportedly stated during the podcast that he will not sue the Colombian state for what happened to his son, but explained that what he asks is for harsher penalties for those involved in the assassination and for the name of the person who “gave the order” to be made public.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
