BOGOTA: Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro had trouble refueling his plane on a trip to the Middle East after being sanctioned by the United States, his government said Thursday.
Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said that the presidential plane stopped in Madrid to refuel on the way to Saudi Arabia but that officials at Barajas airport, Spain’s biggest, refused to fill it up.
After negotiations with Spain’s left-wing government, the plane landed at a military base to refuel.
President Donald Trump’s administration has accused Petro of enabling drug cartels and placed him on the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.
He, his wife Veronica Alcocer, eldest son Nicolas, and Benedetti are banned from traveling to the United States and any US assets they have are frozen.
