Trump has waged an unprecedented military campaign that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States – Copyright AFP\/File Andrea ARIZA, Brendan SMIALOWSKI<\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s president accused on Saturday Washington of violating his country\u2019s sovereignty and killing a fisherman, shortly after US leader Donald Trump confirmed that US forces carried out another strike in his military campaign against \u201cnarcoterrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has waged an unprecedented military campaign that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs from Latin America to the United States.<\/p>\n
Washington says its operations have dealt a decisive blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people killed \u2014 at least 27 so far \u2014 were drug smugglers.<\/p>\n
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on X that \u201cUS government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in our territorial waters. Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug traffickers and his daily activity was fishing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carranza was reportedly killed in a September strike by US forces on his boat while he was fishing the Caribbean, according to video testimony of his family members shared by the president on X.<\/p>\n
Experts say such summary killings are illegal even if they target confirmed narcotics traffickers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal on,\u201d Petro said, referring to the strike that killed Carranza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe await explanations from the US government.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Drug-smuggling submarine\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Trump said Saturday that the United States was sending two suspected drug traffickers back to their native Ecuador and Colombia, after a military strike on their \u201cdrug-smuggling submarine\u201d in the Caribbean that killed two others.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social platform, adding that the vessel was loaded with fentanyl and other drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo of the terrorists were killed. The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petro confirmed that the Colombian suspect had been repatriated and would face prosecution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are glad he is alive and he will be prosecuted according to the law,\u201d Petro said on X.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old Colombian was in serious condition upon his return, according to the Interior Ministry.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe arrived with brain trauma, sedated, drugged, breathing with a ventilator,\u201d Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said.<\/p>\n
At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela alleged to be the origin of some of them.<\/p>\n
Washington has not revealed the departure point of the alleged drug-smuggling submarine in the latest strike.<\/p>\n
Semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle shipyards have for years been used to ferry cocaine from South America, particularly Colombia, to Central America or Mexico, usually via the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n
Petro\u2019s government has repeatedly criticized the US campaign. Last month, he called at the United Nations for criminal proceedings to be opened against Trump over the strikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump has waged an unprecedented military campaign that he says is aimed at choking the flow of drugs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,27459,1127,2605,4122,130566,3,111,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232],"class_list":["post-235629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-colombia","tag-conflict","tag-drugs","tag-ecuador","tag-hide","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}