The Colombian government on Friday blamed leftist ELN rebels for the bombing of a police academy in Bogota that killed 20 people as well as the attacker, and dealt a body blow to the peace process.
Defense Minister Guillermo Botero, speaking from the presidential palace, described Thursday’s car bombing as a long-planned “terrorist attack committed by the ELN.”
The attack is a major setback to two years of peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) — first hosted by Ecuador and currently by Cuba — that failed to go beyond the exploratory stage before stalling when hard-right President Ivan Duque took power in August 2018.
In the wake of the attack, Duque announced that he was reinstating arrest warrants for 10 ELN members who are part of the group’s delegation to the Cuba talks and said he was revoking “the resolution creating the conditions that allow their stay in that country.”
“The national government knows and understands that the ELN has no will for peace,” Colombia’s peace commissioner Miguel Ceballos told reporters earlier.
Botero told the same press conference he had “full evidence” that the bomber — earlier identified as Jose Aldemar Rojas Rodriguez, 56 — has been a member of the ELN for more than 25 years.
Police said Rojas drove his explosives-packed Nissan pick-up into the cadet school compound, slewing around a vehicle checkpoint, and crashing it into a dormitory building before it detonated.
