WASHINGTON, DC – In September, the United States launched dozens of deadly military strikes against suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Nearly six months later, surprisingly little is known about the strike. The identities of the approximately 157 people killed have not been made public. No evidence against them has been made public.
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But the United Nations and a group of international law experts hope to change that in testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Friday.
The international hearing is the first of its kind since the strike began on September 2, and rights advocates hope it will lead to accountability as individual cases related to the strike progress.
Stephen Watt, senior staff attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Human Rights Program, said the goals of the hearing were threefold.
“Our request is that we conduct a fact-finding investigation into what is going on,” Watt said.
The second purpose, he continued, would be to “assert or come to the conclusion that there is no armed conflict here,” which would be a rebuke of US President Donald Trump’s previous assertions.
Finally, Watt said he hopes the process will provide the Trump administration with the transparency it has long sought regarding “the legal justification for the boat attack.”
“We don’t think there is,” Watt added.
“We don’t know the name.”
Experts scheduled to testify at Friday’s hearing said the IACHR has a unique mission to uncover the truth behind the U.S. attacks.
The Commission, based in Guatemala City, Guatemala, is an independent investigative body within the Organization of American States, of which the United States was a founding member in 1948.
The Trump administration claims it has the right to carry out the deadly attacks as part of a broader military offensive against so-called “narco-terrorists,” but human rights groups have denounced the operation as a series of extrajudicial killings.
They argue that President Trump’s deadly tactics deny any subject access to due process.
Legal experts also rejected President Trump’s claim that drug-related crime suspects are equivalent to “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict.”
Few details of the airstrike have been revealed. However, some families have informally come forward as loved ones of the deceased.
Relatives say the victims include 26-year-old Chad Joseph and 41-year-old Rishi Samaroo, who were on their way home to Trinidad and Tobago when they were killed in October.
According to the complaint filed with the U.S. government, both men traveled frequently between the island and Venezuela, with Joseph finding work as a farmer and fisherman and Samalu working on a farm.
The family of Colombian Alejandro Carranza, 42, also said he was killed when U.S. forces attacked his fishing boat off the country’s coast in September.
The US has yet to confirm the identities of the victims, and only two survivors have been rescued from the 45 reported attacks.
Experts like Watt say a clearer picture of what happened would be an important step toward accountability.
“(IACHR) is in a unique position to identify who all these people are,” Watt said. “All we know are the numbers from the United States. We don’t know the names or backgrounds of these people.”
The IACHR has launched a variety of human rights investigations in recent decades, including the 2014 mass kidnapping of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico, and the Trujillo Massacre, a series of murders in Colombia between 1988 and 1991.
The commission also investigated U.S. policies, including extrajudicial detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during the so-called “Global War on Terror.”
The IACHR has the power to seek resolution of human rights complaints or to refer cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Just last week, a court ordered Peru to pay compensation to the families of women who died during government-sponsored forced sterilizations in the 1990s.
The Carranza family has filed a complaint with the International Human Rights Association (IACHR), and the families of Joseph and Samaroo have also filed a lawsuit against the United States in federal court in Massachusetts.
Angelo Guisado, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said a more complete accounting of U.S. actions is needed to prevent future human rights abuses. He is one of the experts testifying on Friday.
“We cannot allow assassinations of fishermen off the coast of South America to become the norm,” Guisado told Al Jazeera. “It is truly sadistic and an abhorrent act against the rules-based order that we have created.”
“Therefore, we are hopeful that the committee will be able to do some investigation.”
A war against “narco-terrorists”?
One of Guisado’s goals during Friday’s hearing will be to clarify the Trump administration’s argument that the attack was necessary from a national security perspective.
Even before the U.S. airstrikes began, the Trump administration began to characterize the drug trade in Latin America as an existential threat to the United States.
As part of its reframing, the administration borrowed messages from the Global War on Terrorism and took the unconventional approach of calling some cartels “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Speaking at a gathering of Latin American leaders last week, National Security Adviser Stephen Miller insisted there is no “criminal justice solution” to drug cartels.
Instead, he asserted that the United States would use “hard power, military force, and lethal force to protect and defend the homeland of the United States,” even if it meant conducting deadly operations throughout the Western Hemisphere.
However, Guisado noted that the administration acknowledged that the targeted boats were primarily loaded with cocaine, not the highly addictive fentanyl that is responsible for the majority of drug overdoses in the United States.
He explained that little has been done to prove the administration’s claims that drug traffickers are part of a systematic effort to destabilize the United States.
Such hyperbole can be used as a smokescreen to cover up illegal activity, Guisado added.
“When you bring up national security interests, it’s as if scrutiny and legitimate analysis and condemnation are sidelined in favor of radical martial law,” Guisado said.
“The idea that you can declare anyone a narco-terrorist and do whatever you want to them is deeply offensive to our system of fairness, justice, and law.”
Meanwhile, Mr Watt said he hoped the IACHR would draw a clear “red line” between drug crimes and traditionally considered armed conflict.
He also wants the IACHR to clearly outline the United States’ human rights obligations.
“But even if there was an armed conflict, in fact there is no armed conflict, the kind of conduct that the United States is doing here would be prohibited by the laws of war,” Watt explained.
“That would be extrajudicial killing. That would be a war crime.”
transparency or accountability
Friday’s hearing was just the first step toward accountability, with critics questioning how effective the IACHR will ultimately be.
The United States routinely ignores human rights investigations in international forums and is not party to institutions such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague, increasing barriers to the pursuit of justice.
Although the United States is a member of the OAS, it has not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, one of the organization’s founding documents.
It is therefore unclear to what extent the IACHR’s decision will be binding, but Watt argued that “it is the Commission’s long-standing precedent that declarations impose obligations on non-ratifying Member States.”
Still, legal experts said Friday’s hearing could clarify the Trump administration’s legal claims over the boat attack.
IACHR announced that a representative of the U.S. government will attend the hearing.
To date, the U.S. Department of Justice has not released the Office of Legal Counsel’s official rationale for the boat attack, which is considered a legal document on which military action is based.
Another memorandum from the same office references the January 3 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by the United States as part of a drug crackdown.
The memo mentioned the boat attack, but it only raised further questions about President Trump’s rationale.
“This will be an opportunity for the United States to present its case to the committee,” Watt said.
“But of course, that depends on the cooperation of the United States,” he continued. “They’re heading there, but it’ll be interesting to see what they actually say.”
