Pentagon Conducted Lethal Boat Strike With Aircraft Disguised as Civilian Plane

The U.S.’s already highly contested September 2 strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea was reportedly carried out by an aircraft that the military disguised as a civilian plane, seemingly using the practice of perfidy, a war crime.

The initial attack in the U.S.’s boat strike campaign was carried out by a plane that was painted to look like a civilian aircraft — lacking the grey color and markings typical of a military plane. It also secretly carried munitions in its fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, The New York Times reported Monday, citing officials briefed on the strike.

Disguising military assets as civilian ones is a practice known as perfidy, which is illegal under international law, and is also barred within U.S. military guidelines. By disguising U.S. warplanes as civilian ones, the Pentagon makes it more likely that civilians will be harmed in the future.

The plane flew low enough for the people onboard the boat to see the plane, officials who were briefed said. This makes the action a war crime, the Times reports, citing former Air Force deputy judge advocate general Steven Lepper, who said that making a disguised plane visible to the targets can lull them into a false sense of security that would prevent them from taking evasive action or surrendering.

“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” Lepper said. “If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”

The Times also points out that any defense of the practice that hinges on the fact that it did not take place in the context of armed conflict is superfluous, noting that the U.S. has previously prosecuted people who used perfidious tactics in a different military context of a noninternational armed conflict.

The reporting adds another layer of potential war crimes committed by the U.S. in the initial boat strike alone.

At a base level, experts have said that all of the administration’s boat strikes are illegal, targeting civilians based on a dubious legal theory of “self-defense” against “narco-terrorists.”

Further, the September 2 boat strike has already faced scrutiny as the military carried out a “double tap” strike on the vessel — with the second strike killing survivors clinging to the wreckage of the vessel, lawmakers who reviewed footage of the strike said.

That attack killed 11 people. The U.S. has carried out 35 publicly announced boat strikes, killing 123 people. The last publicly announced strike was carried out on December 31, just days before the U.S. abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has sinceillegally seized two more oil tankers, but has not struck more boats.