Colombian President Gustavo Petro is asking Haitians to forgive a group of Colombian mercenaries accused of being guns-for-hire in the still unsolved 2021 assassination of their president, Jovenel Moïse.

The men, 17 of whom are currently jailed in Haiti and another one who is serving a life sentence in the United States after pleading guilty to the killing, do not represent the Colombian people, Petro said.

“I ask for your forgiveness because some white Colombians came here to kill the president of Haiti,” said Petro. “In the name of all the Colombian people I tell you that we do not believe in that death that those Colombians spread, we believe in life.”

Petro’s apology came at the end of his historic visit to Haiti on Wednesday while surrounded by members of his government. Instead of visiting Port-au-Prince, the country’s gang-ridden capital as he had originally requested in August, Petro traveled to the coastal city of Jacmel in southeastern Haiti.

“I want to thank you for helping my America, my Colombia, achieve freedom,” he said. “You even gave us our flag.”

Arriving six hours behind schedule after a brief visit to the neighboring Dominican Republic, the ex-guerrilla fighter and first left-wing president of Colombia went to a meeting with Haitian officials and then later retraced the steps of South America’s liberators, Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar. He visited the Haiti home of Bolívar and joined Haitian officials in unveiling of two busts — one dedicated to Bolívar and the other to President Alexandre Pétion, who as leader of the southern part of Haiti in 1816 gave Bolívar ammunition and Haitian soldiers to go free northern South America from Spanish rule.

“We are exactly where Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar, full of dreams and perhaps fears, left from,” Petro said, standing on the docks from where both men launched the drive for independence in 1806 and 1816 respectively. “They slept here, in this village. They sought support, found it, and then set out to conquer freedom on our continent, in our lands, our mountains, our plains, and our magnificent beaches.”

Petro’s visit came amid a violent upsurge in both countries, and as the United Nations Security Council begin meeting Wednesday on the situation in Haiti. In Colombia at least 80 people have been killed, including civilians, and thousands have been displaced over four days due after the National Liberation Army, known by its Spanish initials ELN, launched an assault in the Catatumbo region last week, endangering the current peace agreement. In Haiti, where gang violence killed more than 5,600 last year and has displaced over 1 million people, ongoing attacks by criminal groups continue to make most of the capital a no-go zone.

Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, who resigned Monday but represented his South American nation and Petro at the Security Council meeting, told U.N. members about Petro’s visit and said Colombia is looking to assist Haiti.

“We are firmly committed to Haiti and that commitment is not solely born of solidarity, but of the conviction that the Haitian people deserve real opportunities to build a stable and prosperous future,” Murillo told members of the Security Council who are faced with deciding whether to transform the current Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission into a formal U.N. peacekeeping operation to help curb the surging violence.

Petro’s visit, Murillo said, was aimed at extending support to Haiti to see if the two countries can tackle issues of poverty and strengthening institutions. Colombia also wants to help Haiti, used by Colombian drug traffickers as a transit point for U.S. bound cocaine, with interdiction of weapons, ammunition and drugs.

Leslie Voltaire, the head of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, said the cooperation that will take place between Colombia and Haiti “will be very beneficial for the Haitian population in security, in education, in humanitarian assistance in agriculture, in tourism, in culture.”

“We hope that this ... cooperation continues, not only with Colombia but with all the other countries that Bolívar freed,” he added.

Haiti’s government spent more than $3.8 million to prepare for the visit, which included lengthening the small airport’s runway to accommodate Petro’s military aircraft, cleaning the streets and turning the electricity back on for the first time in three years. School was also suspended for three days.

In his speech, Petro paid homage to Haiti’s independence — what he described as a Black revolution that is both forgotten and hidden today. He spoke of the revolutionary spark it created in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, nations liberated by Bolívar. And he railed against present-day efforts to disenfranchise Black and Hispanics, specifically mentioning President Donald Trump, who has begun targeting some immigrants for deportation since his inauguration Monday.

“We have to tell Trump, we have to tell those whose father was an immigrant who escaped from the Nazi armies, that humanity is more important, that only nations can live if humanity lives and humanity can only live if it is free, if they are free beings,” Petro said. “The stars cannot be reached as long as there are wars and bombings. Children in any country in the world want to reach the stars. Well, we have to make the earth a paradise of freedom and a paradise of life.”

But it was his apology that got the most attention from Haitians and Colombians, although with different reactions.

In a morning news program, Haiti’s minister of communication mentioned it among the highlights of the visit. In Colombia, however, families of the jailed Colombians expressed disappointment and a sense of betrayal.

The 17 Colombians, who opted to remain behind bars last years when armed gangs raided their prisons, are among at least 21 jailed Colombians in Haiti. The are currently appealing their murder charges in Haiti’s court of appeals while a former leader of the group, Germán Alejandro Rivera Garcia, known as “Colonel Mike,” was sentenced in Miami to life in prison for the killing after pleading guilty.

Instead of seeking their release, Petro condemned them with his apology, Janeline Carmona Flores, mother of 2nd Lt. Jheyner Alberto Carmona Flores said in a video she posted on social media. Carmona, wearing a T-shirt with her son’s image, said she and other family members were hoping for the men to be transferred home.

“We thought that our case was on the agenda ... in Haiti and it did not come up,” she said. “He condemned them, asking for forgiveness for a crime that my son and his companions did not commit.”

Carmona pointed out that the group has been jailed now more than three years, and they have been forced to stay in “inhumane conditions” in a country with no institutions and no guarantee of receiving a fair trial.

Reminding Petro of his own time in prison, she pleaded for help. “I ask you please; you experienced injustice when you were arrested and put in jail.”

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(El Nuevo Herald reporter Antonio Maria Delgado contributed to this report.)

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