Petro defended a 'humble fisherman' who had been imprisoned for the theft of 264 firearms.

The communist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, once again caused controversy after his statements regarding the United States military operation on September 16, in which a Colombian criminal identified as Alejandro Andrés Carranza Medina, known as "Coroncoro," was killed.

In a message posted on his X account, the president accused the United States of having "murdered a humble Colombian fisherman" and of having "destroyed a family of fishermen" in Santa Marta.

However, the reality behind the case is far from the image of innocence that the far-left president tried to project, who constantly defends the narcoterrorists killed by the United States.

According to judicial information confirmed by the 19th Sectional Prosecutor's Office of Magdalena, Carranza Medina had a criminal past that directly linked him to a serious case of police corruption in Santa Marta. This was the theft of 264 firearms from the Sijín evidence warehouse between March and September 2015.

Investigations showed that the criminal operation included forgery of official documents and internal complicity within the Metropolitan Police, which allowed the weapons seized from illegal groups to return to the organized crime circuit. Far from being a simple fisherman, Carranza was identified as one of the key pieces in the criminal network.

Petro's attempt to present this criminal as a victim of an alleged "unjustified attack" by the United States was harshly criticized both in Colombia and abroad.

Another United States military operation

In one of the latest operations against drug trafficking, on the morning of Sunday, October 19, the United States Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, confirmed that the attacked vessel belonged to the Colombian guerrilla known as the National Liberation Army (ELN).

According to the U.S. official, intelligence services already had information about this boat, which had previously entered U.S. waters and had repeatedly been used for the transport of large quantities of cocaine along an old drug trafficking route.

"On October 17, under President Trump's direction, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike against a vessel affiliated with the National Liberation Army (ELN), a designated terrorist organization, operating in the United States Southern Command's area of responsibility," Hegseth stated.

The secretary specified that the operation took place in international waters and that during the attack, three members of the Colombian guerrilla group, active in the border area with Venezuela, were killed.