After the destruction of a boat off the Colombian Caribbean coast, President Gustavo Petro made serious accusations against the USA. “US government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” wrote the left-wing head of state on Saturday evening (local time) on the X platform.
His statements refer to a report by the broadcaster RTVC, according to which a fishing boat was destroyed by a bombardment off the coast of the department of La Guajira in mid-September and a fisherman was killed. A video published was supposed to show the Colombian’s boat and the moment of the detonation.
At the time, the boat is said to have been in Colombian maritime territory. “The fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no connection to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing,” wrote Colombia’s president. “We are awaiting statements from the US government on this.”
Trump on Petro: illegal drug lord
US President Donald Trump reacted indirectly on Sunday with an angry post on his online platform Truth Social. First, he spelled “Colombia” incorrectly in English: “Columbia” instead of “Colombia”. The error has now been corrected on Truth Social, but it was still visible on an official White House account on Sunday morning (local time).
In the post, Trump described Petro as an “illegal drug lord” and announced that he would immediately stop all US payments to the South American country. Petro is doing “nothing to stop massive drug production,” Trump said.
The Colombian head of state is “an unpopular leader with a cheeky mouth towards America,” the US President continued to say against his counterpart. If he doesn’t close these “killing fields” immediately, the USA would do it for him – “and that won’t happen in a nice way.”
Trump justifies attacks as anti-drug operations
The Republican Trump is repeating his accusation against the left-wing politician Petro of being inactive in the fight against the international drug trade from Colombia. The USA has been repeatedly attacking boats in the Caribbean for weeks and justifying this by cracking down on drug trafficking.
Petro countered that Trump was being “deceived by his circles and advisors.” The biggest enemy of the drug trade in Colombia in the 21st century was “the one who exposed its connections to political power – and that was me,” the president wrote on
The US last bombed a boat on Thursday. According to Trump, it was a “DRUG TRANSPORTING SUBMARINE,” as stated in a previous post on Truth Social. This was on a “well-known drug smuggling route” on the way to the USA with “four known narco-terrorists” on board, two of whom survived the attack.
According to Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, one of them is a countryman. He was seriously injured and handed over to the Colombian justice system.
