Colombian President Gustavo Petro <\/span>publicly ordered<\/span><\/a> the military to stop sharing information with the U.S. government on Tuesday in response to U.S. military strikes against suspected smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea. And Britain privately did the same over a month ago, according to a <\/span>CNN report<\/span><\/a> published the same day. Both countries have been happy to cooperate with Washington against drug trafficking, but think that the decision to kill the suspected smugglers at sea is a step too far.<\/span><\/p>\n

At least one of the people killed in the boat bombings was a Colombian citizen. “He may have been carrying fish, or he may have been carrying cocaine, but he had not been sentenced to death,” Petro <\/span>said in a speech<\/span><\/a> on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. “There was no need to murder him.” After Petro criticized the U.S. military campaign last month, the U.S. Treasury accused Petro of being complicit in drug smuggling and <\/span>imposed financial sanctions<\/span><\/a> on him, his wife, and his son.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Britain is usually not thought of as a Caribbean country, it used to be a major colonial power there and still has several Caribbean territories. For the past few years, Britain has both been carrying out its own antidrug patrols and passing along tips to the U.S. Coast Guard through the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Florida. After the U.S. began bombing suspects, the British government determined that the intelligence sharing was illegal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another neighboring country whose <\/span>citizens were killed<\/span><\/a>, Trinidad and Tobago, has been <\/span>more supportive<\/span><\/a> of the campaign. “I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently,” Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said in a <\/span>September 2025 statement<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n