The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is set to hold its first international hearing on the US’s alleged extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, following a series of deadly military strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats that have killed 157 people.
The hearing, which will take place on Friday, will be the first of its kind since the strikes began on September 2, and rights advocates hope it can help lead to accountability as individual legal cases related to the strikes proceed. Authorities said the identities of the nearly 157 people killed have not been released, and any purported evidence against them has not been made public.
Steven Watt, a senior staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights programme, said the goal of the hearing will be to conduct a fact-finding investigation into what’s going on, assert that there is no armed conflict, and yield long-sought transparency from the Trump administration on whether or not they have a legal justification for these boat strikes.
Background to the Strikes
The US began launching dozens of deadly military strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific in September, with the Trump administration claiming it has a right to carry out the deadly attacks as part of a wider military offensive against so-called “narco-terrorists”.
However, rights groups have decried the campaign as a series of extrajudicial killings, arguing that Trump’s deadly tactics deny those targeted of anything that approaches due process. Legal experts have also dismissed Trump’s claims that suspects in drug-related crimes are equivalent to “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict”.
International Response
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based in Guatemala City, Guatemala, is an independent investigative body within the Organization of American States, of which the US was a founding member in 1948. The commission has launched a range of human rights investigations in recent decades, including probes into the 2014 mass kidnapping of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico.
Angelo Guisado, a senior staff lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said a fuller accounting of the US actions is needed to prevent future abuses. He is among the experts testifying on Friday, and hopes that the commission can do some investigation into the US actions.
The US Department of Justice has not released the Office of Legal Counsel’s official reasoning for the boat strikes, considered the foundational legal document for the military actions. A separate memorandum from that office addressed the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3, which it framed as a drug enforcement action.
Source: Al Jazeera
