BOGOTÁ: Colombia’s Interior Minister Armando Benedetti has criticized the United States after being placed on its sanctions list, rejecting accusations linking him to drug trafficking and accusing Washington of “injustice and hypocrisy.”
“For having defended the dignity of the country and stated that the president @petrogustavo is not a drug trafficker, they put me on the OFAC (US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control) list without me having attacked them,” Benedetti wrote on the US social media platform X.
Saying that he has never entered the house of even a single drug trafficker, Benedetti added: “That shows that every empire is unjust and that its anti-drug fight is a sham for armamentism. In this country, no one buys the story that I am a drug trafficker.”
“For the US, a non-violent statement is the same as being a drug trafficker,” he wrote, in one of his strongest public reactions yet against Washington.
According to the Anadolu news agency, Benedetti’s remarks came hours after the US Treasury’s OFAC announced new sanctions targeting Colombian President Gustavo Petro, citing what it described as his administration’s “failure to combat the illicit drug trade.”
The US Treasury said the designation also includes restrictions on Petro’s immediate family and close associates.
President Petro’s son, Nicolás Petro, who was placed on the sanctions list alongside his father, denounced the move as “political persecution.”
“For the sole fact of being the son of @petrogustavo they unjustly put me on the Clinton list. An unprecedented political and judicial persecution. I will go to international organizations to defend my rights,” he said.
The sanctions mark a sharp escalation in tensions between Bogotá and Washington, as Petro’s leftist government continues to push for what it calls a “new international approach” to the war on drugs — one that prioritizes social reform over punitive measures.
