This is what President Gustavo Petro said about Ricardo Martinelli before granting him political asylum.

The Colombian government's recent decision to grant political asylum to former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli has sparked mixed reactions due to past opinions expressed about the man by President Gustavo Petro.

Martinelli announced through his X account that he was back in Bogotá last Saturday, May 10, after spending 16 months in asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy. Now, thanks to posts on the same social network, people are questioning the diplomatic decision.

When examining the posts in which the president refers to the now-asylum seeker, we must go back a few years. The most recent was in 2016, and the oldest was in 2010, when strong criticism of the then-president's decisions was evident.

One of these publications, in fact, addressed the questioning of the Panamanian government's decision to grant political asylum to the former director of the DAS, Maria del Pilar Hurtado. "The one who persecuted the magistrates for their investigations into paramilitarism is protected by Martinelli, " the foreign minister laughs.

In a response to another user's post a day later, he even referred to the Colombian government's decision to "respect" the official's asylum and criticized then-President Juan Manuel Santos, saying he was "accepting to Martinelli that he is a political persecutor."

On multiple other occasions, the president also portrayed Martinelli as a "friend" of former President Álvaro Uribe and accused him of "covering up for a criminal." "Uribe and the Panamanian Martinelli understood each other so well, God made them and..." he asserted in another post.

At the same time that the former director of the DAS was granted political asylum in Panama, the then-president of that country asserted that "she helped him a lot in the fight against narcoterrorism." This assistance was also questioned by Petro, who stated, "If the US refused Martinelli's request, did the Colombian government help him?"

Today, Martinelli is seeking asylum, this time in Colombia, after spending more than a year in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama. This decision has been widely criticized, as the businessman and former president of that country had been convicted by his country's justice system for acts of corruption involving public funds.

The decision was announced last Saturday by the Foreign Ministry, which stated that " the decision is based on observance of the pro persona principle and Colombia's humanist tradition of protecting people persecuted for political reasons."

Martinelli thanked the Colombian and Nicaraguan governments for helping him seek refuge in Panama and later asylum in Bogotá. According to him, Nicaragua's support allowed him to "save" his life . The Panamanian government criticized the decision because it blocks the man from serving his sentence in that country's courts, while arguing that the charges are based on political persecution.

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