BOGOTA.- The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petrofiled a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for alleged insults and slander against former president Andrés Pastrana, in response to accusations in which he alluded to alleged links with drug trafficking.
Pastrana accused Petro of having links to drug trafficking and of using its policy of total peace as an excuse to “merge” the Government with organized crime, which led Petro to announce at the end of November that he would denounce him.
In Pastrana’s opinion, the calls to negotiate with armed paramilitary groups are nothing more than a façade to embed drug trafficking and terrorism in the State of Colombia, allying with dictatorships such as Cuba to achieve the objective.
Petro recorded a four-page text sent to the attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, and in which he ensures that Pastrana’s statements are “completely false.” “There is no basis of truth in his statements and these statements do not reflect in the slightest the reality of my administration and the principles that guide it,” he alleges in the complaint, collected by the station. Snail Radio.
Petro attached evidence to the complaint that would theoretically demonstrate the falsehood of Pastrana’s statements, who has criticized the management of the current Government on numerous occasions.
Petro exempts consumers from responsibility
An executive decree disclosed by local media made sanctions against “the carrying of narcotic or psychotropic substances” that are for personal use and not for sale invalid.
The measure does not alter the sentences of up to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking crimes contemplated by Colombian law, but it ends the fines equivalent to about fifty dollars that the police impose on consumers.
“If the Constitution allows personal dosing, police activity should not focus on persecuting drug users but rather on persecuting major drug lords,” the president, Gustavo, explained on the social network X (formerly Twitter). Petro.
“It is necessary (…) to avoid the criminalization of drug users through corrective measures,” reads the decree, dated December 7.
Source: With information from Europa Press/AFP
