The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said Wednesday that in the judicial investigations of his country on drug trafficking “a poster of the suns does not appear”, after the Senate approved last night a proposition that declares that group as a transnational criminal organization linked to the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro.
“In our judicial investigations on drug trafficking there is no ‘poster of the suns’,” Petro said in his X account in which he assured that the cocaine that arrives in Venezuela for the Apure state comes from the center of Colombia.
The Colombian head of state added that in the Catatumbo, a border region with Venezuela, “cocaine is controlled by armed groups that have been strengthened” and stressed that there are already more than five thousand hectares of coca crops in a voluntary eradication phase and an ongoing peace process with dissidents of the FARC, with agreed concentration areas.
Petro on the Aragua train
Petro also referred to the Venezuelan Criminal Group Train de Aragua, which said that in Colombia “dozens of members” have been captured and that is composed of excluded migrants dedicated to criminal activities that “cannot be called terrorists.”
In contrast, the president said that in the Department of Cauca (Southwest), the Central General Staff (EMC), the main dissent of the FARC, have developed “activities that can be cataloged as terrorism”, by massively affecting the civilian population with explosives or when using it as a shield before military operations.
On the eve, the Colombian Senate approved a proposition in which he declared the so -called “Cartel de los Soles” as a transnational criminal organization, linked to drug trafficking and terrorism, and urged the government to fulfill its international commitments on the matter.
Petro had already dismissed that thesis in August, when he described the poster as “a fictitious excuse of the extreme right to tear down governments that do not obey them.”
Washington accuses Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials to lead the ‘poster of the soles’ and offers a reward of fifty million dollars for information that allows his arrest.
