Colombia's security forces detained this Saturday Néider Yesid Uñates López, known by the alias "Primo Gay", identified by the authorities as one of the top leaders of illegal armed structures and considered the most wanted criminal in the province of Antioquia, in the northeast of the country.
The capture took place in an operation led by the Colombian Army when Uñates López was traveling from Briceño to Ventanas, a mountainous corridor located in the north of Antioquia, according to police sources told the Caracol broadcaster. During the intervention, he would have been intercepted with drones and high-end technological material, allegedly intended for surveillance tasks and for carrying out attacks against military units.
The president of Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, has celebrated the closure of "ten years of criminal activity" by the leader through a message on social media, in which he attributes to him, among other crimes, "the massacre of thirteen police officers in Amalfi, the murder of other uniformed personnel, and the kidnapping, torture and murder of the journalist Mateo Pérez Rueda".
De la Espriella also holds him responsible, within the framework of his time with organizations such as the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), the FARC dissidents and the Clan del Golfo, for the forced displacement of more than 2,500 people, for multiple extortion cases, and for attacks on energy towers in Medellín and Bello.
"These individuals had their lives respected during the operations because our Public Force acts under the Constitution and the law. But they should not make a mistake: they have the full weight of Justice waiting for them, a maximum-security cell and, if the legal requirements are met, extradition to the United States," the president warned when referring to "Primo Gay" and the alias "Pata de Palo", the second-in-command of one of the structures of the Clan del Golfo, captured in a simultaneous action. "Impunity has run out for these wretched bandits!" he emphasized.
The record of the alias "Primo Gay"
Alias "Primo Gay" was part of the Frente 36 —an armed structure of the FARC dissidents— and later would have joined the Clan del Golfo —considered the largest criminal and narco-paramilitary organization in Colombia—, according to the information released by the authorities.
His name appears in various investigations into homicides, disappearances, kidnappings and attacks against the Fuerza Pública in municipalities in northern Antioquia, including the case involving the alleged murder of the young journalist Mateo Pérez, whose body was found lifeless in May of this year.
In March, "Primo Gay" managed to flee from a military operation in a rural area of Briceño and, a month later, the Colombian authorities offered 640 million pesos (about 175,000 euros) as a reward for information that would help locate him.
Since August of this year, the authorities in Antioquia had evidence that "Primo Gay" had broken with the FARC dissidents to join the Clan del Golfo, in a context of internal disputes in the Frente 36 and clashes between illegal armed groups over territorial control in the north of the province.
With this arrest, Colombian institutions manage to remove from circulation one of the men with the greatest weight in the armed confrontation that is hitting the municipalities in northern Antioquia.