US President Donald Trump said on Sunday the United States will cut funding to Colombia because the South American country’s leader “does nothing to stop” drug production.
“The purpose of this drug production is to sell massive quantities of the product in the United States, causing death, destruction, and devastation,” he said on his Truth Social platform.
He said that Colombian President Gustavo Petro had better shut down the drug operations, otherwise the United States would shut it down for them, and that would not be done well.
Relations between Bogota and Washington have deteriorated in the past few months. In September, Trump accused Colombia of failing to cooperate in the drug war.
The US State Department then canceled Petro’s visa during his visit to the United Nations because he attended a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York and urged US troops to disobey Trump’s orders.
Colombia accuses US of violating sovereignty in attack
In a statement late Saturday night, Petro accused the United States of violating his country’s sovereignty and killing a fisherman.
It came as Trump said the US military had launched another strike as part of his controversial military campaign against “narco-terrorists”.
“US government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Colombian leader Gustavo Petro said in a statement on Saturday.
Petro identified the fisherman as Alejandro Carranza and said he had “no connection to the drug trade”.
Carranza reportedly died in September in an attack by US forces on his boat while he was fishing in the Caribbean, according to a video testimony from his family members that Petro shared on Twitter.
The president said the Colombian boat had been “drift” and had given a distress signal due to engine failure.
“We are waiting for clarification from the US government,” Petro said.
Survivors of ‘drug boat’ strike sent back
Colombia’s allegations come shortly after Trump on Thursday confirmed a US strike in the Caribbean against what he called a “drug-carrying submarine.”
“It was a great honor for me to destroy a very large drug-carrying submarine that was headed to the United States on a well-known drug trafficking transit route.” The US President said on Truth Social on Saturday.
Trump provided no evidence for the claim, sharing only a short video clip showing a semi-submersible ship in the water before being hit by at least one projectile.
Trump said US intelligence had confirmed that the ship was “loaded with mostly fentanyl and other illegal narcotics.”
There were four people on board, two of whom died in the targeted attack.
The US military rescued two survivors by helicopter.
Those who were the first to survive such American attacks were taken into custody.
On Saturday, Trump said that both were being sent back to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
Petro confirmed that the Colombian suspect has returned and will face prosecution.
“We have found the Colombian detained on the narco submarine, we are glad he is alive and he will be prosecuted according to the law,” the Colombian president said in a post on Twitter.
Trump’s action on drugs
Thursday’s attack is reported to be the sixth US attack on “narco” boats off the Venezuelan coast this year.
The Trump administration says 27 people have been killed in the attacks.
The US actions have raised concerns among experts about the legality of such extrajudicial killings.
Edited by: Sam Dusan Inayatullah and Carl Sexton