Colombian leader threatens to ‘take up arms’ in wake of new Trump threat
After the historic capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump has appeared to threaten Colombia.
The President told reporters on Air Force One that both Venezuela and Colombia are ‘very sick’, and suggested the government in Bogota was run by a ‘sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.’
‘And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you,’ Trump added, before refusing to rule out a US operation in Colombia.
Colombian leader Gustavo Petro took to X today in response to Trump’s apparent threat, speaking of how he personally demanded the ‘largest seizure of cocaine in world history’.
He added, ‘If you bomb even one of these groups without sufficient intelligence, you will kill many children. If you bomb peasants, thousands of guerrillas will return to the mountains.
‘And if you arrest the president whom a good part of my people want and respect, you will unleash the popular jaguar.’
‘Although I have not been a military man, I know about war and clandestinity,’ he added.
‘I swore not to touch a weapon again since the 1989 Peace Pact, but for the Homeland I will take up arms again that I do not want.’
Petro also cited his bombings ‘respecting all norms of humanitarian law’, along with the killing and capture of first-order commanders of armed groups subordinated to narcotrafficking.
Tensions between the US, Venezuela and other Latin American countries are at a breaking point after the US captured Venezuelan leader Maduro this weekend.
Captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has arrived at a Manhattan court building following a tightly orchestrated operation to transfer him from prison.
Today, the 63-year-old is due to face charges including narcoterrorism and weapon offences at a Manhattan court.
A motorcade including an armoured vehicle carrying the ousted leftist leader was seen leaving the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn early this morning.
Bound in handcuffs and sporting beige clothing with orange trainers, Maduro was filmed from a news helicopter being led from the vehicle into an SUV at dusk.
Trump, who ordered Maduro’s capture along with a barrage of airstrikes on military buildings in and around Caracas, previously claimed Maduro attempted to escape his capture.
The US president said the Venezuelan leader ‘tried to get to a safe place’ but ‘couldn’t reach the door because our men were too fast’.
Court documents accuse Maduro of overseeing a ‘corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking’.
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, is due to appear alongside her husband as a defendant against the charges.
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