The Supreme Court of Colombia charged the current Colombian ambassador to Nicaragua with drug trafficking on Tuesday, August 27, six years after his arrest at Medellin airport with cocaine in his suitcases.
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Police at the airport in the northwest of the country found 346 grams of drugs in Leon Fredy Muñoz’s luggage, prosecutor Marlenne Orjuela Rodriguez said in a hearing Tuesday before the Colombian Supreme Court. The ambassador claims the drugs were hidden without his knowledge by political rivals. On Tuesday, he said “that he didn’t even know about cocaine”.
The prosecutor requested a prison sentence of nine to eleven years. The Supreme Court, which took up the case because it concerns a “senior official”will rule at another hearing.
Turbulent context between Colombia and Nicaragua
The Colombian diplomat, now 52, was released a few days after his arrest on May 31, 2018. He then served in the lower house of Congress from 2018 to 2022, before being appointed ambassador to Nicaragua shortly after the election of Colombian president Gustavo Petro in August 2022.
The diplomat’s indictment comes amid turbulence in relations between Bogota and Managua. On Monday, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega called his Colombian and Brazilian counterparts “in the boot” European Union countries and the United States, by refusing to recognize the disputed results of the presidential election in Venezuela which gave the winner to the incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro.
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Gustavo Petro responded on Tuesday on the social network X: “At least I do not trample on the human rights of the people of my country and even less those of my comrades in arms and in the fight against dictatorships.”
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