By Roxana Navarro
Sep 13, 2024, 01:41 AM EDT
Two men from Colombia were sentenced to 30 years in prison for being responsible for attacking a US troop that was at a military base on the border of Colombia and Venezuela. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that the Hispanics detonated a car bomb outside the base in 2021.
Andrés Fernando Medina Rodríguez, 40, and Ciro Alfonso Gutiérrez Ballesteros, 31, were sentenced by a federal court in Florida to 35 and 30 years in prison, respectively, for conspiring to murder U.S. soldiers, DOJ said in a statement.
According to court documents, Medina Rodríguez and Gutiérrez Ballesteros, together with members of the 33rd Front, an extremist faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), specifically attacked U.S. troops at the Colombian Army’s 30th Brigade base in Cúcuta, Colombia.
One of them was a soldier
Andrés Fernando Medina Rodríguez used his status as a medically discharged Colombian army officer to gain access to the base, where he conducted photographic and video surveillance of areas where U.S. soldiers were primarily located.
About 10 days before the attack, Medina Rodriguez and Gutierrez Ballesteros delivered a white pickup truck to their Front 33 co-conspirators, who loaded it with an improvised explosive device, authorities said.
They parked the van near the soldiers
On June 15, 2021, Medina Rodríguez drove the bomb-laden truck to the military base and parked it in front of where the U.S. and Colombian military personnel worked. Gutiérrez Ballesteros, who was riding a motorcycle, escorted Medina Rodríguez.
The Justice Department said that once inside the military base, Medina activated the bomb’s timer device and left the area on foot before fleeing on the motorcycle. Three U.S. Army soldiers and 44 Colombian soldiers were injured in the explosion.
The two defendants were arrested by Colombian authorities two days after the attack and extradited to the United States in late 2023.
The FBI, with support from the FBI Legal Attaché in Bogotá, the Attorney General’s Office of Colombia and the National Police, investigated the case.
Joint research
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida, and Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of the FBI’s National Security Division made the announcement regarding the sentences received by the two men.
Assistant United States Attorneys Christopher Browne and Abbie Waxman for the Southern District of Florida and Trial Attorney David C. Smith for the National Security Division’s Antiterrorism Section prosecuted the case.
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