There are a number of possibilities for why he was bombed.
He knows too much about the Bush Junta's crimes in Colombia?
He knows too much about Alvaro Uribe's crimes in Colombia?
He knows too much about transglobal corporate crimes in Colombia?
He is, maybe, on the Colombian prosecutors' witness list--prosecutors who are going after Uribe?
A rival drug lord tried to kill him?
He committed crimes himself and his victims were trying to inflict payback by killing him?
Uribe's tenure as president of Colombia parallel's the Bush Junta. Uribe is a Bush Junta protege, and, frankly, I think was the Bush Cartel's "made man" in Colombia. He is known to have been supported, early in his political career, by rightwing death squads, and very likely was directing death squad killings as president. He engaged in massive, illegal domestic spying--including spying on judges and prosecutors--and reportedly was using the country's spy agency to draw up "hit lists" of trade unionists and others, for assassination. Thousands of trade unionists, teachers, community activists, campesino activists, political leftists and other advocates of the poor, and many journalists, were murdered during his tenure--many by the Colombian military itself, others by rightwing paramilitary death squads.
Some 70 of Uribe's closest political cohorts are under investigation or already in jail for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking, bribery, corruption and other crimes. In addition, during Uribe's tenure, FIVE MILLION peasant farmers were brutally displaced from their lands, by state terror--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth. Many of those lands went to Uribe cronies.
As Uribe's "interior minister," Londoño could well have been involved in all of the above crimes, but especially land theft and the violence associated with land theft. One of the motives for the massive land theft in Colombia was likely to get the small-time, peasant coca growers out and the big, favored and protected drug lords in, for massive and more organized cocaine and other drug operations. Londoño himself could be a drug lord and crossed up one of the other big drug lords. I have no evidence for this, just the smell of things in Colombia under Uribe.
That victims of Londoño--say, peasant farmers whose lands were stolen and whose family members were murdered or otherwise harmed--would seek revenge in this way seems unlikely but it can't be ruled out. The method of attack--bombing--might have been designed to make it look like a peasant group, or the leftist guerrilla fighters, the FARC. There may be other reasons for using a bomb (for instance, it doesn't have to be as accurate as a bullet). On the whole, I don't favor this guess. I just thought it should be mentioned (and I think we should be skeptical and wary if such a group is accused of the bombing).
I favor the first three motives for bombing Londoño--that he knows too much about Uribe, Bush Junta and/or transglobal corporate crimes in Colombia--and is under to pressure to disclose what he knows, which would mean that he was bombed by agents of one or all of these parties, or by U.S. agents who are acting to protect Uribe and U.S. and transglobal corporate interests.
It is Uribe's modus operandi to kill his opponents--but that is also the modus operandi of these other parties. Notably, both Drummond Coal and Chiquita International hired death squads to kill trade unionists in their Colombian operations. Bush Jr. & Junta gave Colombia's military $7 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer money and encouraged a "scorched earth" policy against the peasants. There is also evidence that the Bush Junta directly colluded on Uribe's spying operation and possibly even permitted U.S. military or U.S. military 'contractor' participation in death squad activity, and evidence of both Bush Junta and Obama administration involvement in protecting Uribe from Colombia's prosecutors (and from victim lawsuits here in the U.S.). Leon Panetta's first visible action as CIA Director was to go to Bogota. Panetta (an Obama appointee) is tight with Bush Senior.
Things have gotten quite "hot" on the Colombian prosecutor front. They have requested an Interpol warrant for Maria Hurtado, who was head of Uribe's spy agency, DAS. They want her testimony about Uribe. She fled to Panama--a U.S. client state--and was given instant asylum there. There was witness testimony recently that the Bush-appointed U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, had a direct American liaison to DAS. A Wikileaks cable revealed that the president of Panama--a Uribe pal--asked the U.S. ambassador to Panama for the same kind of help that Uribe was getting from the U.S., to spy on his "enemies." DAS was so dirty it has been disbanded.
Brownfield colluded with Uribe to get death squad witnesses out of Colombia and tried to get all U.S. personnel total immunity from Colombia's laws (--but that secret agreement--the Colombia/U.S. military agreement--was ruled unconstitutional by Colombia's supreme court). Panetta likely got Hurtado asylum in Panama (and possibly is the one who got Uribe cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard). Hillary Clinton wrote to the judge in the Drummond Coal death squad case, here, asking him not to compel Uribe to give a deposition. Why? Why are they protecting Uribe?
And, who stands to benefit from Londoño's death?
Maybe I've missed the mark--all my guesses are wrong--but these are the kind of questions I'm asking and that I think should be asked. Londoño's was a top official in a filthy, blood-soaked regime whose crimes were funded by the U.S./Bush Junta, with U.S. personnel possibly directly involved in their crimes and certainly involved in coverups, in removing witnesses, in trying to frustrate prosecutors and judges in their investigations, in protecting and even honoring Uribe (to keep his mouth shut?), in secret deals to expand the U.S. military presence in Colombia and get immunity for everybody, and, finally, in advocating "free trade" with Colombia (now that five million peasants have been driven from their lands and thousands who might have advocated for fair wages and other social justice policies have been murdered).
Is the attempted bombing of Londoño connected to any of this? Was he a threat? To whom? Was he talking to the prosecutors? Had he been asked to? Is he a target of the prosecutors? Etc. Lots of questions. I don't know enough about Londoño to answer them but I certainly want to find out.
There is also evidence of a bitter political battle on the right in Colombia, between Uribe's criminal organization and the current Colombian president, Manual Santos. They are both members/leaders of the same rightwing political party. Santos has openly advocated legalization of drugs (probably a Big Pharma plan unfolding, to profit from legalization) and this may be at the heart of the Uribe vs Santos political fight. (Uribe favors the huge illicit profit of outlawed drugs; Santos is trying to "launder" Colombia's biggest export, by legalizing it, so Big Pharma can move in?) Is Londoño involved in this struggle in some way? With trillions of dollars at issue, that would be motive for attempted murder.
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