Colombia: arrest of an alleged person responsible for the attack which had killed a French woman in 2017

A Colombian guerrilla fighter from the National Liberation Army (ELN), suspected of being responsible for a 2017 attack in Bogota that killed three people, including a French woman, was arrested on Saturday June 4, the Colombian Ministry of Health announced. defense.

“

,” said Colombian Minister Diego Molano.

Three victims including a French

Violeta Arango was arrested in the municipality of Morales, in the department of Bolivar, during a military and police operation carried out at dawn on Saturday, the minister said without giving further details.

The explosion that occurred on June 17, 2017 in the toilets of the Andino shopping center killed three women, two Colombians aged 31 and 41 and a Frenchwoman, Julie Huynh, whose mother, visiting the country, was injured in the attack. .

The 23-year-old woman had been a volunteer for the NGO "

" since February and worked with young people displaced by Colombia's half-century-long armed conflict.

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A peace agreement was signed in November 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc, Marxist) and negotiations were then underway with the Guevarist ELN.

They were broken in 2019 after a bomb attack on a military school in Bogota.

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The two guerrillas immediately condemned the attack, saying they suspected opponents of the peace process of being the instigators.

The anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office had opened a flagrant investigation for "

", a classic procedure due to the presence of French nationals among the victims.