BOGOTA—Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro on Sunday (Monday, Manila time) rejected threats by his US counterpart Donald Trump who also accused him of being a drug trafficker.
US forces attacked Caracas in the early hours of Saturday, bombing military targets during a shock snatch-and-grab raid to remove Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from power and assert Washington’s control over the oil-rich South American nation.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday Trump made similar threats of military action against Colombia, saying the South American country is “very sick too” and “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.”
“He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories and is not going to be doing it very long,” Trump added.
When asked whether military intervention similar to Venezuela was on the cards for Colombia, the Republican leader said: “It sounds good to me.”
“You know why because they kill a lot of people,” Trump claimed without evidence.
Petro rebuffed the accusations saying his “name does not appear in court records.”
“Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump.” Petro said on the social media platform X.
“That’s not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle and then from the people of Colombia’s fight for Peace.”
Petro has harshly criticized the Trump administration’s military action in the region and accused Washington of abducting Maduro “without legal basis.”
In a later post to X on Sunday Petro added “friends do not bomb.”
Colombia’s foreign ministry called the US president’s threats “unacceptable interference” and demanded “respect.”
Colombia and the United States are key military and economic allies in the region, but their relations have been strained.
Since the start of Trump’s second term, the two leaders have regularly clashed over issues such as tariffs and migration policy.
In Washington, DC, At a post-raid press conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the operation as “largely a law enforcement function.” FBI agents were in Caracas during the operation and read Maduro his rights as they took him into custody, Rubio added.
On Sunday talk shows, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was among Democrats who challenged the operation’s legality.
“This was not simply a counter narcotics operation. It was an act of war,” Jeffries said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“This was a military action, and pursuant to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war to authorize acts that take place in this regard.”
According to Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the Maduro operation broke international law.
An international arrest of a person not living in the United States is normally done through an extradition request, she said.
“Instead, what we see happening here is a military rendition where we’ve got the military go into Venezuela, kill a reported 40 people, and then seize Nicolas Maduro to bring him out to face charges,” McQuade told MS NOW.
“The problem with that arrest is that it violates the UN Charter,” she added, noting the United States is a signatory of the United Nations’ founding document.
However, Bill Barr, the attorney general in Trump’s first administration, expressed “a high degree of confidence” that Maduro would be convicted for drug trafficking — just as Panamanian strongman General Manuel Noriega had been after he was forcibly removed from power and taken to the United States following its 1989 invasion of Panama.
“All the legal arguments that have been raised really were… raised during the prosecution of Noriega, which was a very parallel situation,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday.”
