US designates Colombia’s Clan del Golfo gang as a terrorist group

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – The United States has designated Colombia’s Clan del Golfo crime gang, currently the country’s largest illegal armed group, as a terrorist organization, according to a notice posted to the U.S. Treasury Department’s website on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has been designating criminal groups in Latin America as terrorist organizations, raising the costs for those who provide support for the groups, which Washington says are responsible for moving drugs and migrants into the United States.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration last year sanctioned top leaders of the Clan del Golfo, which in recent years began to refer to itself as the Gaitanist Army of Colombia. 

In a statement on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the group a “violent and powerful criminal organization” whose main source of income was cocaine trafficking and was responsible for terrorist attacks in Colombia.

“The United States will continue to use all available tools to protect our nation and stop the campaigns of violence and terror committed by international cartels and transnational criminal organizations,” Rubio said. 

The Clan del Golfo group and the government of Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro are currently holding talks in Qatar, part of Petro’s embattled plan to bring peace to the country after six decades of armed conflict. His term ends in August 2026.

The top leaders of the Clan del Golfo would definitely serve prison time under a possible deal, the government’s chief negotiator told Reuters last week, adding that officials are seeking to make progress at talks “irreversible” before a new administration takes office next year.

The Clan del Golfo in recent years has sought to position itself as a political entity similar to other Colombian armed groups, which would grant it different conditions at peace talks, but it is not widely considered to have concrete political aims.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Susan Heavey; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb)