Colombian men sentenced for 2021 car bombing targeting US soldiers

Two Colombian nationals were sentenced to prison Thursday for conspiring and attempting to murder American soldiers by detonating a car bomb in 2021 outside a military base near the Colombia-Venezuela border, the Justice Department announced.

Andres Fernando Medina Rodriguez, 40, and Ciro Alfonso Gutierrez Ballesteros, 31, were sentenced to 35 and 30 years in prison, respectively, for the crimes, the department said.

The decision closes a chapter in the case against the attackers, who set off a blast that injured “three U.S. Army soldiers and 44 Colombian military personnel,” the department said.

U.S. soldiers had been dispatched to the South American country in 2020 in part to help its military plan anti-narcotics operations, Army Times previously reported.

The pair of Colombians, along with members of an extremist faction of the group Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, known as the 33rd Front, targeted American troops stationed at the Colombian 30th Army Brigade base in Cúcuta, Colombia, according to court documents.

Medina Rodriguez used his status as a former Colombian army officer to gain access to the base to conduct surveillance. Then, on June 15, 2021, he drove a bomb-laden SUV to the installation, activated an explosive and fled on a motorcycle driven by Gutierrez Ballesteros.

Both of the Colombian men were extradited to the U.S.

“Our most urgent mission and highest priority is to hold those accountable who target Americans, to include the brave men and women who serve as members of our uniformed services domestically and around the world,” Markenzy Lapointe, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, federal authorities extradited another Colombian national charged with drugging, kidnapping and robbing two U.S. soldiers in Colombia in 2020.