Trump administration is sued for 2 deaths in boat attack off the coast of Venezuela

The President of the United States, Donald Trump REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst The family members of two men killed in a US missile attack on a suspected drug trafficking boat near Venezuela filed a lawsuit for death resulting from an unlawful act, this Tuesday (27). They allege the pair were murdered in a “manifestly illegal” military campaign that targeted civilian vessels. Civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit in Boston federal court, marking the first legal challenge to one of 36 U.S. missile attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean authorized by President Donald Trump’s administration that have killed more than 120 people since September. Family members of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo — two Trinidadian men who were among six killed during an attack on Oct. 14 — claim in the lawsuit that the two worked in fishing and agriculture in Venezuela and were returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad, when they were attacked. “These are lawless, cold-blooded murders; murders for sport and murders for theater, which is why we need a court to proclaim what is true and restrain what is illegal,” Baher Azmy, plaintiffs’ attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement. Venezuela’s opposition leader meets with Trump at the White House The Center and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit under the death at high seas law, a maritime law that allows family members to sue for wrongful death on the high seas, and the alien tort statute, a 1789 law that allows foreign citizens to sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law. The lawsuit was filed by Lenore Burnley, Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister, and seeks compensation from the US government for the two deaths, not an injunction preventing further attacks. However, the case could provide a way for a court to assess whether the October 14 attack was legal. The Pentagon did not respond to questions on the topic. The Trump administration has called the attacks carried out under the direction of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a war against drug cartels, claiming they are armed groups. The government claims its attacks comply with international rules known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict. But the attacks drew questions from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, which has not authorized attacks on drug cartels, and condemnation from human rights groups. Legal experts have previously said that drug cartels do not meet the accepted international definition of an armed group.

Source link