BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association
Your Data Your Rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a Trump administration boat strike last October sued the federal government on Tuesday, calling the attack a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign.”
The lawsuit is thought to be the first wrongful death case arising from the three dozen strikes that the administration has launched since September on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The complaint will test the legal justification of the Trump administration attacks; government officials have defended them as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States, but many legal experts say they amount to a brazen violation of the laws of armed conflict.
The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no military conflict between the United States and drug cartels that under the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.
“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command,” the lawsuit says.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement that the Oct. 14 strike “was conducted against designated narcoterrorists bringing deadly poison to our shores.”
“President Trump used his lawful authority to take decisive action against the scourge of illicit narcotics that has resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans,” Kelly stated.
The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Chad Joseph and the sister of Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who were among six people killed in the Oct. 14 missile strike on a boat traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The men were not members of any drug cartel, the lawsuit says, but had instead been fishing in the waters off the Venezuelan coast and were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago.
The two had caught a ride home to Las Cuervas, a fishing community where they were from, on a small boat targeted in a strike announced on Truth Social by President Donald Trump. All six people aboard the boat were killed.
“These killings were wrongful because they took place outside of armed conflict and in circumstances in which Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, and where there were means other than lethal force that could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any such threat,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit is the first to challenge the legality of the boat strikes in court, according to Jen Nessel, a spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of the families, along with the ACLU and others.
Nessel said in an email that the center also has a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the release of the legal justification for the strikes.
Jeffrey Stein, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, told reporters over Zoom that the lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages that can be determined after a trial.
“We don’t think that it’s something that we could put a precise dollar amount on,” Stein said. “But we’re seeking damages that can go some way towards bringing justice for these really heinous abuses of power.”
The lawsuit also aims to prevent more boat strikes, Stein said, with the hope that a U.S. court rejects the Trump administration’s “frankly absurd claims about its authority to engage in these illegal strikes.”
The death toll from the boat strikes is now up to at least 126 people, with the inclusion of those presumed dead after being lost at sea, the U.S. military confirmed Monday. The figure includes 116 people who were killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September, with 10 others believed dead because searchers did not locate them following a strike.
You can support trusted and verified news content like this.
FIPA’s news monitor subscribers, donors and funders help make these available to everyone rather than behind a paywall. We appreciate every contribution because it makes a difference.
If you found this article interesting and useful, please consider contributing here.
