The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, once again criticized the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump’s government on him and his family last Friday.
On social media, the leftist president said he feels “blackmailed” after being included by the American government on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list, known as the “Clinton List”, which implies the freezing of his assets in the USA and prohibits transactions with Americans.
In addition to Petro, the US Treasury Department announced the inclusion of his wife, Verónica Alcocer; his son, Nicolás Petro; and the Colombian Interior Minister, Armando Benedetti, on the Ofac list for alleged links with drug trafficking.
This restriction hindered an official trip by the Colombian president to the Middle East. He had difficulty arriving in Saudi Arabia during a stopover in Cape Verde, when an American company refused to refuel his plane for fear of violating Ofac regulations, forcing him to travel to Madrid, where the Spanish government came to his aid.
After what happened, the Colombian took to social media to criticize the Trump government again. “It’s good that the American company is humiliating me, because the contract with them will be terminated. The world knows that (US President Donald) Trump is persecuting me because I opposed the genocide in Gaza and crime in the Caribbean, and not because I transported cocaine or because I had a niece and a sister-in-law involved in organized crime, or an uncle, or because I was part of Pablo Escobar’s cartel,” he said.
Before the sanctions, the US had already suspended Petro’s visa after his participation in a pro-Palestinian event in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, last month.