13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’ | US military
A five-month investigation has identified the names of 13 previously unidentified victims of U.S. attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs in a campaign that left nearly 200 people dead in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
It is unclear whether the US has detected any of them. 194 victims Before he attacked them, the names of only three men had emerged after their families filed a lawsuit against the White House.
The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to justify the killings, which began during the military build-up in Venezuela last year, by claiming that those targeted were “narco-terrorists” transporting drugs to the United States.
But this week, a joint effort by 20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) The identities of 13 of those killed were publishedsome showed no signs of being involved in drug trafficking.
CLIPS report It showed that all the victims identified so far, including those who may have been involved in drug trafficking, came from extremely poor communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Despite the United States claiming that the attacks are fighting narco-terrorism, what is actually happening is the targeting of young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing their best to support their families,” said María Teresa Ronderos, director and co-founder of CLIP.
“The United States is not taking down Pablo Escobar or Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán,” he added.
The investigation also highlighted what other reports and security analysts concluded: attacks I don’t have It reduced the flow of drugs into the United States, but instead fractured communities that were already fragmented and weakened by organized crime and state neglect.
“There are communities that stop fishing for several weeks and people go hungry because they are afraid of being bombed if they do,” Ronderos said.
The main finding, he said, was to put the names and faces of a larger number of victims “to show that these were flesh-and-blood people,” even if the vast majority remained unidentified.
The investigation brought together journalists, media organizations and collectives from Colombia (CasaMacondo, Verdad Abierta and 360-grados.co) and Venezuela (Alianza Rebelde Investiga) and the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, with support from NGOs Airwars from the UK and El Veinte from Colombia.
Ronderos said it was an “extremely difficult” investigation due to fear of speaking out among relatives, communities and local authorities. “Official government sources, prosecutors’ offices; no one wants to talk because everyone is afraid of damaging relations with the United States and facing reprisals,” he added.
Eight of the 16 victims currently identified are Venezuelan: Juan Carlos Fuentes, 43; Luis Ramón Amundarain, 36; Eduard Hidalgo, 46; Dushak Milovcic, 24; and Robert Sánchez, Jesús Carreño, Eduardo Jaime and Luis Alí Martínez, ages unknown. Three of them are Colombian: 42-year-old Alejandro Andrés Carranza Medina and Ronald Arregocés and Adrián Lubo (ages unknown). Two are from Ecuador: Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, 40, and Carlos Manuel Rodríguez Solórzano, 34; two are from Trinidad: Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo (age unknown); and one from Saint Lucia: Ricky Joseph (age unknown).
Amundarain and Fuentes were drivers from Güiria, Venezuela, who crossed the Gulf of Paria to Trinidad and Tobago after being promised work at a car wash.
A few days later, they received a job offer to go on a small boat cruise with two other people. On October 3, the boat was bombed. Their widows told CLIP that neither man was involved in drug trafficking, but the report notes “all signs” indicate that they “were about to ‘escape,’ the local term for illegal cargo transportation.” However, it was noteworthy that the boat was going from Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela: “Boats carry drugs from South America to the north, not the other way around,” Ronderos said.
In some cases, the victims were fishermen with no indication of involvement in the drug trade, such as the Colombian and two Trinidadians whose families filed lawsuits against the United States. But the report found that even men involved in the drug trade often fit the profile of people who turn to drug transport as a way to escape grinding poverty.
In the eight months since the airstrikes began, the United States has produced no evidence that any of the 194 victims were involved in drug trafficking.
U.S. Southern Command spokesman in question that all attacks were “deliberate, lawful and precise, and were directed specifically against narco-terrorists and those who support them. We have full confidence in the operations and intelligence experts who inform our missions.”
Ronderos said that even though all of those killed were carrying drugs, “there is no death penalty for cocaine trafficking, so it is extremely disturbing that they were killed before they even had a chance to defend themselves.”
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and a former lawyer for the US State Department, said the boat attacks were never a “serious counter-drug operation” by Trump. “I think this is partly a military stunt to create the illusion that the administration is doing something ‘macho’ on drugs,” he added.
Organizations, countries and United Nations He condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings, but they still continue.
Finucane warned that there was a risk that the killings would be “normalised” by the public and US politicians or “become ‘background noise’ as the administration embarks on many different military misadventures, such as the ongoing war with Iran”.
Meanwhile, Ronderos said local communities bore the brunt of the killings: “Whether these men were doing business legally or illegally, children in already extremely poor families were left without a food bringer.”
