The US treasury department has announced sanctions on Colombian president Gustavo Petro, one of Donald Trump’s harshest international critics.
“President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to stop this activity,” treasury secretary Scott Bessent wrote in a post on X. “Today President Trump is taking strong action to protect our nation.”
In a response on X, Petro said that he has greatly reduced the growth rate of coca plantations in Colombia, and implied that the drug trade was not the United States’s underlying motivation behind the sanctions.
“My government has seized more cocaine than any in the entire history of the world.” Petro wrote in Spanish. “What the US treasury is doing is an arbitrariness typical of an oppressive regime.”
The sanctions are not the first action the US government has taken against Petro. The US state department revoked Petro’s visa in September after he took part in pro-Palestinian protests in New York. Petro, who has consistently criticized US support of Israeli military actions, urged American soldiers to “not to point their guns at people. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity.”
“Revoking it for denouncing genocide shows the US no longer respects international law,” Petro added in a post on X.
Petro did not mince his words when speaking on the United States’ extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean. One attack killed a Colombian fisher whose family and the Colombian government denied he was a drug trafficker.
“It is murder. Whether in the Caribbean or Pacific, the US government strategy breaks the norms of international law,” Petro wrote on social media.
While rare, the imposition of sanctions on a head of state is not unprecedented. The move adds Petro to a list that includes the leaders of Russia, Venezuela and North Korea.
Petro’s wife, son and Armando Benedetti, Colombia’s interior minister, were also hit with sanctions on Friday under the authority that allows Washington to target those it accuses of being involved in the global illicit drug trade.
On X, Benedetti said he had been penalized for merely stating that Petro was not a drug trafficker, and that the sanctions proved the US anti-drug fight was a “sham”.
Former lawmaker Nicolas Petro, who is already facing corruption charges in Colombia, said on X he had been targeted for being his father’s son and that his pending case has nothing to do with drug trafficking.
Friday’s action freezes any US assets of those targeted, and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.
“President Trump has been clear that President Petro better close up these killing fields immediately or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
