BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called for a criminal investigation against US President Donald Trump and other officials involved in this month’s deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean that the White House has said were transporting drugs.
Petro repudiated the three attacks in his speech at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly during which he also accused Trump of criminalizing poverty and migration.
“Criminal proceedings must be opened against those officials, who are from the US, even if it includes the highest-ranking official who gave the order: President Trump,” Petro said of the strikes, adding that boat passengers were not members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as claimed by the Trump administration after the first attack.
If the boats were carrying drugs as alleged by the US government, Petro said, their passengers “were not drug traffickers; they were simply poor young people from Latin America who had no other option.”
Petro’s comments came shortly after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced that his government is preparing a series of constitutional decrees to defend the country’s sovereignty in the event of an “attack” from US forces.
