Trump dispenses with trials, orders military strike on alleged Venezuelan drug-trafficking boat

RocksInMyHead said:

Turns out Tom Clancy was actually a prophet!

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essentialsaltes said:

It doesn't seem likely.

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U.S. could have stopped boat allegedly trafficking drugs from Venezuela but Trump chose to blow it up, Rubio says​ The strike Tuesday on the vessel in the Caribbean, which U.S. officials said killed 11 people, was intended to send a message, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up,” he said. “And it’ll happen again.”

The administration has not provided a legal authority or justification for the attack Tuesday that killed 11 people.

U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers.

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essentialsaltes said:

Or migrants. per NYT

The former official also said it was unusual to have 11 people manning a vessel that could easily be crewed by two or three, especially since traffickers are always trying to maximize the amount of cargo space devoted to carrying drugs, not human beings.

In the former official’s opinion, it was more likely that the vessel was carrying migrants on a human smuggling run. It would be impossible to know for sure, however, given that any evidence of drug smuggling was destroyed in the attack.

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essentialsaltes said:

Or migrants. per NYT

The former official also said it was unusual to have 11 people manning a vessel that could easily be crewed by two or three, especially since traffickers are always trying to maximize the amount of cargo space devoted to carrying drugs, not human beings.

In the former official’s opinion, it was more likely that the vessel was carrying migrants on a human smuggling run. It would be impossible to know for sure, however, given that any evidence of drug smuggling was destroyed in the attack.

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essentialsaltes said:

Legal Issues Raised by a Lethal U.S. Military Attack in the Caribbean​

Although the facts are still emerging, the Trump administration’s extraordinary lethal attack on this purported smuggling vessel – and its vow that the strike was a start of a campaign – raise a number of significant potential legal issues. And even apart from these legal concerns, the strike constitutes a deeply troubling gratuitous use of the military that resulted in the unnecessary killing of 11 individuals.

Public reporting on the past interpretation of the assassination ban indicates that the U.S. executive branch has recognized two potentially relevant exceptions to the prohibition in recent decades: (1) actions taken in self-defense; and (2) use of lethal force consistent with the law of war.

With respect to self-defense, the Trump administration has indicated that it is countering the flow of drugs to the United States. But drug trafficking by itself does not constitute an “armed attack,” nor a threat of an imminent armed attack, for the purposes in international law. Nor does drug trafficking represent the predicate for self-defense commonly recognized as required for the invocation of self-defense under criminal law in the United States.

civilians directly participating in hostilities may also be made the object of attack. Smuggling drugs by itself does not render a civilian a combatant/fighter subject to status-based targeting. Nor does it constitute direct participation in hostilities. [with respect to the law of war]

Experts Say Trump Administration’s Deadly Boat Attack Amounts to Extrajudicial Killings​

Experts say the administration’s deadly strike violated international law.

“Labeling someone a terrorist and deploying the military does not make them a military target,” Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement to Truthout. “These actions amount to an extra-judicial killing, a violation of international law, which should raise extraordinary concerns.”

“Using military forces to kill alleged drug traffickers is an act of murder, not war,” Wells Dixon, a senior attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Truthout in a statement following the attack on Tuesday.

Civil rights attorney Alec Karakatsanis called the killings “extra-judicial assassinations — a preemptive death penalty with no process — for vague alleged nonviolent drug distribution offenses.”

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RDKirk said:

The fact is, the US has gotten pretty loose about attacking various folk since the 1980s.

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