Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro accused Washington
on Saturday of violating his country’s sovereignty and killing a fisherman,
shortly after US leader Donald Trump confirmed that US forces carried out
another strike in his military campaign against “narcoterrorists.”
Trump has waged an unprecedented military campaign
that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs from Latin America to the
United States.
Washington says its operations have dealt a decisive
blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people
killed — at least 27 so far — were drug smugglers.
Colombian President said on X that “US government
officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in our territorial
waters. Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug traffickers and his
daily activity was fishing.”
Carranza was reportedly killed in a September strike
by US forces on his boat while he was fishing the Caribbean, according to video
testimony of his family members shared by the president on X.
Experts say such summary killings are illegal even if
they target confirmed narcotics traffickers.
“The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress
signal on,” Petro said, referring to the strike that killed Carranza.
“We await explanations from the US government.”
‘Drug-smuggling Submarine’
This combination of pictures created on January 26,
2025 shows US President Donald Trump in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of
Los Angeles, California, on January 24, 2025 and Colombian President Gustavo
Petro in Cali, Colombia, on September 9, 2023.
Trump said Saturday that the United States was sending
two suspected drug traffickers back to their native Ecuador and Colombia, after
a military strike on their “drug-smuggling submarine” in the Caribbean that
killed two others.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large
DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well
known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform,
adding that the vessel was loaded with fentanyl and other drugs.
“Two of the terrorists were killed. The two surviving
terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and
Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”
Petro confirmed that the Colombian suspect had been
repatriated and would face prosecution.
“We are glad he is alive and he will be prosecuted
according to the law,” Petro said on X.
The 34-year-old Colombian was in serious condition
upon his return, according to the Interior Ministry.
“He arrived with brain trauma, sedated, drugged,
breathing with a ventilator,” Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said.
At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have
been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela
alleged to be the origin of some of them.
Washington has not revealed the departure point of the
alleged drug-smuggling submarine in the latest strike.
Semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle
shipyards have for years been used to ferry cocaine from South America,
particularly Colombia, to Central America or Mexico, usually via the Pacific
Ocean.
Petro’s government has repeatedly criticized the US
campaign. Last month, he called at the United Nations for criminal proceedings
to be opened against Trump over the strikes.
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