In a scenario full of diplomatic tension, President Gustavo Petro took advantage of a public event at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogotá to establish an official position regarding the capture of Nicolás Maduro.

This Tuesday, January 27, a few days after his expected meeting with Donald Trump in Washington, the Colombian president made a direct request to the United States Government: that the leader of the Venezuelan regime be returned to his country to be prosecuted by local courts and not by North American justice.

The capture of Maduro, which occurred on January 3 and which keeps him in a New York prison with his wife Cilia Flores, has been the central axis of Petro’s speech.

According to the president, the military intervention that ended in the bombing of Caracas represents a break in regional sovereignty. “They have to return him and have him judged by a Venezuelan court, not an American one. And why? Because Latin American civilization is different from European Anglo-Saxon civilization,” Petro asserted.

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During his speech, President Petro not only questioned the US operation, but also launched attacks against international organizations. He compared the situation in Venezuela to the conflict in Gaza, noting that the United Nations has been “incapable of solving a genocide.”

For the president, the use of missiles on Latin American capitals does not solve structural problems and he compared Maduro’s extractivist vision with that of Donald Trump and Álvaro Uribe, stating that, although they are similar in their faith in oil, the judicial autonomy of the civilization of the south must be respected.

This statement hardens the climate prior to Petro’s visit to the White House, where he will meet Trump face to face. While the United States Prosecutor’s Office advances in the trial for narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine against Maduro, the Colombian president insists that the political processes of Latin America cannot be measured with Washington’s parameters.

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