The U.S. military’s strikes on boats in the waters surrounding Central and South America, which have targeted and killed dozens of civilians, constitute some of the most serious violations of international law and must lead to prosecutions of those responsible, a UN human rights expert has said.
Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of human rights while countering terrorism and Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney, said the military is carrying out systematic murder after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced four strikes on alleged drug boats earlier this week.
“The U.S. has now murdered 57 civilians in attacks on 14 civilian boats,” said Saul in a post on social media on Wednesday. “A systematic attack on civilians is a crime against humanity under international law. When will other governments speak out?” A crime against humanity is considered one of the most serious violations of international human rights law.
On Tuesday, Hegseth announced that the Trump administration had carried out three strikes on four vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean earlier that day. The strikes killed 14 people and left one survivor. The survivor was rescued by the Mexican government, which condemned the strikes.
Further, after Saul’s post on Wednesday evening, Hegseth announced yet another strike carried out that day, killing four people.
Amnesty International USA condemned the strikes as a “murder spree” in a statement on Wednesday.
“In the last two months, the U.S. military’s Southern Command has gone on a murder spree by following the Trump administration’s illegal orders,” said Daphne Eviatar, the group’s director for human rights and security. “The administration has not even named its victims, nor provided evidence of their alleged crimes. But even if they did, intentionally killing people accused of committing crimes who pose no imminent threat to life is murder, full stop.”
The latest strike brought the total publicly announced death toll to 61. The Trump administration has alleged that the people it’s killing are “narco-terrorists” in “narco-trafficking vessels,” and that the strikes were carried out in self defense. However, the Pentagon has not provided any evidence backing these claims to the public or even to Congress.
Even if the claims were true, however, experts say that it is still illegal to target drug cartels in this way.
“Under international law, all countries must respect the right to life, including when acting on the high seas or in foreign territory. The use of potentially lethal force is only permitted in personal self-defence or defence of others against an imminent threat to life,” a group of UN experts, including Saul, said in a statement last month. The experts said there is no evidence that the strikes are being done in self defense.
Saul has previously called for those responsible for the strikes to be “investigated and prosecuted.”
President Donald Trump has also confirmed that the CIA is carrying out covert operations in Venezuela and surrounding areas. Venezuela’s government claimed that it foiled a false flag attack by a CIA-backed group on an American warship this week.
The Trump administration has sought to obscure information on the strikes from Congress and the public. On Wednesday, Democrats were excluded from a briefing with over a dozen Republicans in the Senate on the strikes. However, even in the briefings that are being held, lawmakers say that the administration is withholding information, including a report by the Office of Legal Counsel that reportedly has a list of a broad range of cartels being targeted by the campaign that have not been made public.
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