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Recent US airstrikes on vessels allegedly involved in drug trafficking breached international law and could constitute crimes against humanity, a United Nations report has concluded.
The report, prepared by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul, says at least 68 US strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean and Pacific since September last year, killing more than 220 people. The findings were reported by the BBC.
UN questions legal basis for strikes
Saul said that even if those targeted were members of designated terrorist groups, they had not carried out an armed attack against the United States that would give Washington a right to self-defence under international law.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law,” Saul concluded in a briefing note released by the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.
He described the attacks as “serial extrajudicial killings” that violated the right to life and said they were not justified under national or personal self-defence, international humanitarian law, the law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions or international counter-terrorism law.
US says targets were involved in narcotics trafficking
The report was issued two days after the US military said four people had been killed in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean.
“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists,” US Southern Command said in a statement accompanying a low-resolution video of the attack.
The White House and State Department have been contacted for comment on the report.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously said the wider operation is intended to remove “narco-terrorists from our hemisphere” and protect the United States from “the drugs that are killing our people”.
Questions over evidence and operation Southern Spear
The US military launched the operation, known as “Southern Spear”, in early September. Officials, however, have not provided definitive evidence that the targeted vessels were involved in drug trafficking.
Experts have questioned the legality of the strikes since the operation began. The attacks also drew strong criticism from Latin American leaders whose citizens were among those targeted.
Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader at the time and an opponent of the strikes, was seized by US forces in a controversial night raid on Caracas at the beginning of this year. Gustavo Petro, then Colombia’s left-wing president and another vocal critic of “Southern Spear”, left office in August after a candidate backed by US President Donald Trump won the June presidential election.
