Colombian President Gustavo Petro has ordered a halt to intelligence sharing with United States security agencies as President Donald Trump’s administration continues to launch missiles at boats in the Caribbean.
“An order has been given at all levels of the public security force’s intelligence services to suspend communications and other dealings with US security agencies,” Petro said on X on Tuesday, adding that the suspension “will remain in force as long as the missile attacks on boats continue”.
The Colombian leader also shared a post with unconfirmed media reports that the United Kingdom has made a move similar to Bogota’s over legal concerns related to the ongoing US attacks that have so far killed at least 75 people.
Petro has called for Trump to be investigated for war crimes over the strikes, which the US says are targeting drug boats and which have affected citizens of Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The leftist leader has long been a critic of US drug policy and has accused the Trump administration of going after peasants growing coca, the base ingredient of cocaine, instead of targeting major drug traffickers and money launderers.
On Sunday, Petro said he met with the family of a Colombian fisherman who was allegedly killed in one of the strikes.
“He may have been carrying fish, or he may have been carrying cocaine, but he had not been sentenced to death,” Petro said during a summit between Latin American and European Union leaders hosted by Colombia on Sunday. “There was no need to murder him.”
The Trump administration has accused Petro of being soft on traffickers and has criticised the Colombian president’s decision to spare Colombian rebel leaders involved in the drug trade from extradition to the US.
This is also not the first time that Trump and Petro have clashed. In September, the Colombian president left the US within hours of Washington revoking his visa for what it said were his “reckless and incendiary actions” while in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly.
Earlier in the day, Petro had addressed a crowd protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza outside UN headquarters, where he called on US soldiers to “disobey the orders of Trump” and “obey the orders of humanity”.
Responding to his visa being taken away, he said: “Revoking it for denouncing genocide shows the US no longer respects international law.”
More recently, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Petro, his family and the South American country’s interior minister, Armando Benedetti, accusing him of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine industry and of shielding criminal groups from accountability.
Petro’s announcement on Tuesday came as a US aircraft carrier arrived in the Caribbean Sea, fuelling speculation the Trump administration is considering escalating its military action in the region, which has primarily targeted the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime US rival.
The Pentagon confirmed that the Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier, had arrived in the Caribbean with at least 4,000 sailors and “tactical aircraft” on board.
