The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, denounced this Tuesday a supposed plan to attack his integrity that prevented him from arriving on Monday at the Caribbean department of Córdoba due to fear of «an attack against the helicopter» in which he was traveling with his children.
«I have to confess here, to say it, that I come from two days not in the arms of love, but escaping from being killed,» said Petro in Montería, the departmental capital, where he chairs a ministerial council focused on the floods affecting the northwest of Colombia.
According to Petro, that is why last night he could not reach Montería, where he was expected, since after two hours of flight there were no security conditions for the landing of the presidential helicopter, so the aircraft had to fly out to sea.
«Instead, this morning I did not land where I had to land because I had (information) that they were going to shoot at the helicopter, with my children too, and I did what I know how to do, so we went out to sea for four hours and I arrived where I should not have arrived, but I arrived,» he stated.
The head of state did not give details of his journey, which apparently began on Gorgona Island, in the Pacific, where he said today on his X account, he was yesterday before traveling to Montería, on the Atlantic coast.
No authority from the security agencies has reported the discovery of a supposed plan to attack the president.
Throughout his mandate, which began on August 7, 2022, the Colombian president has several times denounced supposed plans to assassinate him.
In September 2024, he stated that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), through the US ambassador in Bogotá, had alerted him to a supposed plan to kill him before the end of that year in an attack with a truck loaded with dynamite.
Petro also indicated today that before the meeting on February 3 at the White House with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, he ordered a police general to be taken out of service, who, according to him, «someone had given the order» to put «psychoactive substances» in one of the official vehicles where he travels, with the objective of «destroying» the crucial meeting in Washington.
«That puts me in a state of alarm,» the president added.