BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — 
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has called for a criminal investigation against U.S. President Donald Trump and other officials involved in this month’s deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Petro repudiated the three attacks in his speech at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly during which he also accused Trump of criminalizing poverty and migration.
“Criminal proceedings must be opened against those officials, who are from the U.S., even if it includes the highest-ranking official who gave the order: President Trump,” Petro said of the strikes, adding that boat passengers were not members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as claimed by the Trump administration after the first attack.
If the boats were carrying drugs as alleged by the U.S. government, Petro said, their passengers “were not drug traffickers; they were simply poor young people from Latin America who had no other option.”
Petro’s comments came shortly after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced that his government is preparing a series of constitutional decrees to defend the country’s sovereignty in the event of an “attack” from U.S. forces.
Few details are known about the deadly strikes, the first of which took place Sept. 2 and killed 11 people, according to the Trump administration. U.S. officials have said that boat and another vessel targeted Sept. 16 had set out to sea from Venezuela. Three people died in the second attack.
The U.S. military struck a third boat Friday, killing three people.