Family of Colombia’s attorney general will leave the country after controversy with Petro

Photograph released today by the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office showing the Colombian Attorney General, Francisco Barbosa, while speaking during a press conference in Bogotá (Colombia). Photo EFE/ COLOMBIAN PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE/ EDITORIAL USE ONLY ONLY AVAILABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE ACCOMPANYING NEWS (MANDATORY CREDIT)

The Colombian attorney general, Francisco Barbosa, announced this Friday that his family will leave the country following the statements by President Gustavo Petro, who has caused controversy by assuring that he is the direct boss of that official.

“In the next few days my family will leave the country for fear that they will be assassinated because of what has happened today in Colombia. This is not a game, this is not a mechanism to be taken lightly. Gustavo Petro is not the head of the opposition in a country, he is the head of state,” Barbosa said in a statement to the press.

The Colombian president has starred in his most recent controversy in the last few hours, after he referred to Barbosa in Spain as his subordinate.

“I am the head of state, therefore the head of it,” Petro told reporters in the Spanish city of Salamanca where he received a decoration today, an act with which he closed his official visit to that country.

The declaration of Petro It occurred in the midst of a controversy that he has had for months with Barbosa, who has questioned the president’s decisions, mainly related to his policy of total peace, and on Thursday he reproached the president for putting “a tombstone for judicial officials” with his comments ».

Prosecutor’s criticism

In this sense, Barbosa assured today that “in this country Colombians such as (the politicians) Luis Carlos Galán, Rodrigo Lara and many others have been murdered, who were declared as State crimes.”

Likewise, the prosecutor said that he will review with his team the legal actions for Petro’s advertisements.

In light of Petro’s comments, the Supreme Court of Justice today expressed “great concern over the erroneous interpretation of Article 115 of the Constitution” by the president.

“The Attorney General of the Nation, who holds the qualities of a high court magistrate, does not have a hierarchical superior and is chosen by the Supreme Court of Justice from a list drawn up by the president”, and is “an official whose mission is clearly regulated by the legal order and framed in the autonomy and independence of the Judicial Branch”, the Court responded to Petro.

Petro’s comments have caused a stir in the country, with criticism from former presidents such as Andrés Pastrana and Iván Duque, jurists and Barbosa himself, as well as Human Rights Watch (HRW).

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