Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro, one of the leaders of the far-left socialist movement in the country, championed presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s candidacy on Monday, saying that if he were able to vote in U.S. elections that he would vote for Biden.
“Did you endorse Joe Biden as a candidate for President of the United States?” CNN host Juan Carlos Lopez asked.
“Well, if I could vote, which I cannot. I’m not a citizen of the United States,” Petro responded. “But if I could vote in the United States, in the interest of my Latin American people, I would vote for Biden, without a doubt.”
Reuters reported that Petro spent “years in the now-defunct M19 rebel group – which stormed the Supreme Court in 1985, leading to the deaths of more than 100 people,” Reuters reported.
The Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) wrote the following brief summary about the terror group:
M19 was founded on 19 April 1970, mostly by students. It became the second largest guerrilla group in Colombia after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In the late 1970s, the M-19 began to kidnap drug traffickers, or their children, for ransom. In retaliation, a group of traffickers, including Pablo Escobar, created the death squad, Death to Kidnappers (Muerte a Secuestradores, MAS). The police cooperated with the traffickers by capturing suspected M-19 guerrillas, their associates, and innocent victims, who were then turned over to MAS to be tortured and killed. M-19 essentially ceased to exist in 1990. M-19, under intense pressure from the Colombian government’s security forces, as well as right-leaning paramilitary groups, agreed to a ceasefire.
TRAC listed the group under “Left Wing Terrorist Groups (Maoist, Marxist, Communist, Socialist).”
When he was Mayor of Bogota, which is the capital of Colombia, Colombian media reported that he was the “least popular” mayor in the entire country.