U.S. kills 3 in another strike on ‘narcoterrorists’ vessel, Trump says

The U.S. military struck a vessel that was allegedly carrying illicit narcotics headed to the United States, killing three people, President Donald Trump said late Friday in a social media post, marking at least the third time that U.S. forces have targeted such boats this month.

The strike, which killed three “male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel,” occurred in international waters overseen by U.S. Southern Command, Trump said. The command is responsible for a broad area that encompasses the Caribbean Sea, Central America and South America. No U.S. service members were hurt during the operation, he added.

The Trump administration carried out a similar operation Monday, which also killed three people, and a strike earlier this month that killed 11 people in the Caribbean. Trump said the people killed in the attacks were “positively identified … narcoterrorists” or affiliated with a criminal gang working under the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The attacks have raised questions about their legality.

“The Trump administration now appears to have conducted three lethal strikes in the Caribbean without offering any serious legal justification for the premeditated killing of these people,” said Brian Finucane, the senior adviser to the International Crisis Group for its U.S. program. The United States “did not suffer an armed attack and is not in an armed conflict governed by the law of war,” he added. “In essence, the President is asserting a license to kill outside the law.”

Trump asserted on Friday without proof that U.S. intelligence had “confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics” and was passing through “a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans.” Trump likewise did not offer proof showing that those killed were convicted criminals in his post, which also had an overhead recording of the strike that shows a vessel being blown up while traversing through what appears to be ocean waters.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that illicit drugs and their traffickers pose an immediate threat to the United States. “These are not stock brokers. These are not real estate agents who on the side deal a few drugs. These are organized corporate structured organizations who specialize in the trafficking of deadly drugs into the United States of America,” he said on Sept. 4.

Congressional Democrats have pressured the administration to produce evidence proving its assertions. More than 20 petitioned the president on Sept. 10 to clarify a host of facts, after a closed-door briefing by the Pentagon that two people familiar with the matter described as vague and unsatisfying, The Washington Post previously reported.

In the past, drug interdiction at sea has typically been considered a law enforcement mission. The Coast Guard is authorized to stop and board the vessels of suspected drug smugglers, confiscate narcotics, and detain the crews for follow-up legal action.

The absence of a substantive legal analysis justifying the attacks is “unsatisfactory and deeply disturbing,” said Mark Nevitt, a professor at Emory Law School who previously served as a pilot and attorney in the Navy. There has been no “clear legal analysis that ties the threat to international and domestic law, including why the drug traffickers amount to an imminent attack against the United States,” he said.