Latin America

Eugene

(66,400 posts) Wed Sep 24, 2025, 10:09 AM Wednesday

Colombia's president calls for criminal investigation against Trump over Caribbean strikes

Source: Associated Press

Colombia’s president calls for criminal investigation against Trump over Caribbean strikes

Updated 9:20 PM EDT, September 23, 2025

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called for a criminal investigation against U.S. 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 U.N. 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 U.S., 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 U.S. government, Petro said, their passengers “were not drug traffickers; they were simply poor young people from Latin America who had no other option.”

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-maduro-us-attacks-petro-united-nations-4ee22a497bb4888efbee243739b1e322

4 replies

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Colombia's president calls for criminal investigation against Trump over Caribbean strikes (Original Post) Eugene Wednesday OP

Accountability Knows No Borders youssef5070 Wednesday #1

Good malaise Wednesday #2

I was hoping this would happen. He has no immunity in International Law. Lettuce Be Wednesday #3

Happens way too often across this planet malaise Wednesday #4

youssef5070

(13 posts)

1. Accountability Knows No Borders

Reply to Eugene (Original post)

Wed Sep 24, 2025, 10:12 AM

Wednesday

Petro's statement may be provocative, but it cuts to a core truth: the global South is done being collateral damage in U.S. foreign policy.
If the strikes killed civilians — especially poor, unarmed Latin Americans — then someone must be held accountable, no matter their title.

The U.S. has long waged its "war on drugs" in Latin America with devastating consequences: destabilized governments, mass displacement, and countless civilian deaths — all while ignoring the economic desperation that fuels the drug trade in the first place.

What Petro is demanding isn’t anti-American — it’s pro-human rights.
If the Trump administration ordered lethal force based on flawed intel or racialized assumptions, then yes, international law must apply — even to ex-presidents.

The era of impunity must end.