Two Colombians get 35 and 30 years after pleading guilty to plot to murder U.S. soldiers

Two Colombians on Thursday were sentenced in Miami federal court to 35 and 30 years in prison for conspiring to murder U.S. soldiers in a car-bombing attack at a military base near the Colombia-Venezuela border.

Three U.S. Army members were injured in the 2021 assault.

Andres Fernando Medina Rodriguez, a former Colombian military officer aided by an associate, planted a bomb in a vehicle to kill members of the U.S. Army who were working with soldiers in the South American country, according to court records.

Medina Rodriguez, 40, received the longer sentence, and Ciro Alfonso Gutierrez Ballesteros, 32, got the shorter term before U.S. District Judge Roy Altman in Miami federal court.

Both were charged in a five-count terrorism-related indictment filed in 2022. Earlier this year, they pleaded guilty to conspiring and attempting to murder members of the First Security Assistance Brigade, part of the U.S. Uniformed Services. The charges carried up to life in prison.

U.S. soldiers at Colombian Army base

According to the indictment, Medina Rodriguez planned a bombing attack with Gutierrez Ballesteros and others against the U.S. Army soldiers stationed at the Colombian 30th Army Brigade Base in Cucuta, Colombia, in 2021.

Medina Rodriguez used his status as a medically discharged Colombian Army officer to gain access to the base where he conducted surveillance, according to federal prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Justice Department. As part of the surveillance, he took photographs and video of the areas where the U.S. Army soldiers were at the base, the indictment says.

Car outfitted with explosives in Venezuela

One of Medina Rodriguez’s co-conspirators, Gutierrez Ballesteros, instructed him to find a vehicle to carry out a “vehicle borne improvised explosive device” attack at the base. With money from Gutierrez Ballesteros, Medina Rodriguez bought a white SUV, and he and his co-conspirators drove the vehicle to Venezuela where it was outfitted with the explosives, according to the indictment.

In mid-June 2021, Medina Rodriguez drove the vehicle to the 30th Army Brigade Base in Cucuta, Colombia, the indictment states. He then parked it in front of the mission support site and intelligence building where U.S. and Colombian military personnel were gathered.

Medina Rodriguez pulled the detonation pin on the explosive, running away before he fled on a motorcycle driven by Gutierrez Ballesteros, according to the indictment.

Three U.S. Army soldiers were injured in the explosion, authorities said.

The FBI led the investigation of the case, assisted by the FBI legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá and the Colombian National Police.