Venezuela’s interior minister has stated that none of the 11 individuals killed in a US military strike in the Carribean sea last week were members of the Tren de Aragua gang. This directly contradicts claims made by the White House at the time. Trump stated that the 11 were “narcoterrorists” smuggling drugs into the US.
US media is also reporting that the boat had turned around and was heading back before the US military launched its attack. Even before this came to light, the legality of the military strike on a vessel in international waters was highly questionable at best. Experts consulted by the BBC held that it “violated fundamental principles of international law”.
‘A murder has been committed’
Interior minister Diosdado Cabello said:
They openly confessed to killing 11 people… We have done our investigations here in our country and there are the families of the disappeared people who want their relatives, and when we asked in the towns, none were from Tren de Aragua, none were drug traffickers.
A murder has been committed against a group of citizens using lethal force.
Cabello questioned why the individuals weren’t arrested, rather than being killed. He also raised the issue of how the US could have determined that there were drugs on the boat, or that the 11 were gang members at all:
How did they identify them as members of the Tren de Aragua? Did they have, I don’t know, a chip? Did they have a QR code and [the US military] read it from above in the dark?
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell dismissed the interior minister’s statement as the words of an “illegitimate narco-terrorist regime”. Parnell stated:
This strike sent a clear message: if you traffic drugs toward our shores, the United States military will use every tool at our disposal to stop you cold.
Turning back
The New York Times reported that the individuals on the boat saw the US aircraft coming towards them. They then attempted to turn back, before being fired upon multiple times.
The Republican administration attempted to justify its attack. It claimed that the 11 were part of the Tren de Argagua, one of the foreign gangs recently designated as terrorists by the US. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly claimed that:
The President acted in line with the laws of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring poison to our shores.
Michael Becker, professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin, contradicted this defence:
The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets… The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.
‘No proof’
The legality of the the military strike was also called into question by both Democratic senators and some within the Republican party itself.
25 Democratic senators sent a letter to the White House stating that “no legitimate legal justification” had been provided. This sentiment was echoed by senator Jack Reed of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He stated that there was no proof that the vessel was smuggling drugs, that it was engaged in an attack, or even that it was actually Venezuelan.
Reed also drew a parallel to Trump’s recent massive overreach in using the army for law-enforcement purposes:
Our armed forces are not law enforcement agencies… They are not empowered to hunt down suspected criminals and kill them without trial.
Republican senator Rand Paul commented that the journey into the US would be exceptionally long for such a small vessel. He also highlighted the fact that the US should not simply kill suspected criminals without due process.
Escalating tensions
Faced with this line of questioning, the White House repeated its assertion that the strike was “in line with the laws of armed conflict”. The USA has also further increased its military presence in the Carribean Sea. This comes after it deployed over 4,000 additional troops in the waters around Latin America only last month. Nominally, this was part of Trump’s anti-cartel operations.
At the time, military officials claimed that the increased deployments were intended as a show of force. However, on Monday 8 September, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth told US marines on deployment in the Carribean Sea that:
What you’re doing right now is not training; this is a real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people.
On 11 September, Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro stated that the country was prepared for armed conflict. He said:
Along all the Venezuelan coasts, from the border with Colombia to the east of the country, from north to south and east to west, we have a full preparation of official troops.
Maduro said he would deploy military, police and civilian defences at 284 locations across the country. Reuters reported that Venezuelans had noticed the increased visibility of troops in their cities.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/NBC News
This post was originally published on Canary.