Bogotá erupts in protests after it emerged suspect in killing of seven-year-old from a poor district is from a wealthy family

Even in a country often numbed by outbreaks of violence and heinous crime, the brutal death of a seven-year-old indigenous girl has horrified Colombia.

Yuliana Andrea Samboní was playing with a cousin outside her family’s breeze-block home on the morning of 4 December in a poor neighbourhood of Bogotá when a man in a grey SUV snatched her from the street and sped away. Her body was found 10 hours later, raped, tortured and strangled, in the machine room of a hot tub at a nearby luxury penthouse.

The crime prompted outrage and street protests against a killing that has highlighted deep class divides.

The suspect, Rafael Uribe Noguera, is from a wealthy family of lawyers and architects and attended one of Bogotá’s most exclusive schools. Yuliana and her family moved to the city four years ago from southern Cauca province, which is rife with violence linked to Colombia’s ongoing civil conflict. Her father worked in construction and her mother was five months pregnant with her third child.

The neighbourhood of winding, unpaved streets and homes built precariously on steep hillsides where Yuliana lived overlooks a wealthy district of fashionable apartment buildings and stylish restaurants known as Chapinero Alto, where she died.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The coffin of Yuliana Andrea Samboní is carried after a funeral service in Bogotá. Photograph: Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA

“The people from Chapinero Alto were always worrying about their safety because of that poor barrio, and all the time it was the people from the barrio that should have been worrying about those below,” said Enrique Caceres, a taxi driver.

Prosecutors charged 38-year-old Uribe, an architect, with aggravated femicide, torture, abduction and rape. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Investigators told local media it appeared a second person might have been involved in the crime.

Yuliana was buried on Friday in her home town after funeral services held in Bogotá on Wednesday attracted throngs of mourners and protesters who released white balloons as her coffin was escorted from the church by female police officers.

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Five days after her death, the case took a bizarre twist when a key witness – Fernando Merchan, the doorman of the building where Yuliana was killed – was found dead in his home. Although Merchan’s daughter found a suicide note, police said they had not ruled out foul play. “My little daughters forgive me … but I do not want to return to jail. I don’t want to ruin your Christmas, I am innocent,” Merchan allegedly wrote in the note he left, according to Semana news magazine.

Officials allege Uribe and at least one other person tried to cover up the crime scene. According to Merchan’s log and a statement he made to police, Uribe’s brother Francisco and sister Catalina spent several hours with him in the apartment where Yuliana was found before calling the police, although they knew officials were searching for the girl. The pair were questioned on Friday and have been not charged.

Francisco Uribe told local media he was “deeply sorry” for what happened. “We deeply lament the death of Yuliana,” he said. “We apologise for my brother.”

As soon as Yuliana was taken, her cousin who was with her alerted her parents, who called the police. The police managed to identify the vehicle, which was registered in the name of Francisco Uribe, a partner in one of Colombia’s most prominent law firms. He told police he had sold it to his brother Rafael but was unable to contact him.

Francisco Uribe notified police hours later that Yuliana’s body was at a vacant penthouse apartment owned by the family, after taking his brother to the hospital for treatment of a cocaine overdose. Prosecutors allege Rafael Uribe consumed a large quantity of drugs after the crimes were committed.

Rafael Uribe, who was arrested on Tuesday at the hospital where he had been treated, is being held in isolation in Bogotá’s La Picota prison.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Julbencio Samboní cries after the wake of his daughter Yuliana. Photograph: Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA

“I demand, as Colombians demand, the most prompt and severe justice that falls on the person responsible for this murder,” said the president, Juan Manuel Santos.

The crime has sparked nationwide calls for harsher penalties for child rapists in a country where as many as 40 children are sexually abused every day, according to official statistics. While some protesters demanded chemical castration for rapists, others pressed for mandatory life sentences. Colombia made femicide – defined as a gender-based hate crime involving the killing of women – a crime in 2015.

Under Colombia’s existing laws, which do not stipulate the death penalty or life sentences, Uribe faces up to 50 years in prison if convicted.

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Critics of Santos – who received the Nobel peace prize on Saturday for ending a 52-year war with Farc rebels in a peace deal signed on 24 November – noted that while Uribe could face half a century in jail if convicted, a special justice system agreed in the peace deal means guerrillas could escape prison despite widespread allegations of sexual abuse.

Prosecutors have documented at least 232 cases in which boys and girls in Farc ranks suffered sexual crimes at the hands of guerrillas, including rape, forced sterilisation, forced abortion, and other kinds of sexual violence.

María Fernanda Cabal, a rightwing congresswoman, was criticised for politicising an issue on which all Colombians should come together. “They ask for a life sentence for the degenerate Rafael Uribe Noguera and then justify and defend the Farc. Selective justice?” she tweeted.