Guardian reports drug-boat strikes have had no impact on US cocaine flows

Some victims were innocent or low-level, Guardian reports

The Guardian reported that while President Donald Trump has said U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats have stopped 97% of all illegal drugs entering the country by sea, reports show the attacks have had no impact on the amount of cocaine entering the United States.

The Guardian also reported that individuals who have identified some of the victims have found they were sometimes innocent and sometimes “at best low-ranked participants in trafficking networks.”

In a separate briefing note, U.N. Human Rights Council special rapporteur Ben Saul said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the 68 reported attacks that killed 223 people “constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law.” Saul described the attacks as “serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions or international counter-terrorism law.”

The attacks, Saul wrote, “are contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity.”

Saul noted that Trump has told Congress the strikes are “self-defense” against “designated terrorist organizations,” and rejected that framing. “There is no right to use force in self-defense against the criminal groups listed as terrorist organization,” Saul wrote. “Firstly, even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any ‘armed attack’ on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defense.”

Saul’s specific finding that the attacks may constitute crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law goes further than earlier criticism the briefing note catalogues. Saul noted the attacks have been condemned by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. independent experts, the president of the International Narcotics Control Board, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, many international lawyers and others.

In the latest attack Saturday, U.S. Southern Command posted on social media that it “executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking. The operation killed four narco-terrorists.” The post did not name those killed or give any information about the alleged intelligence that led to the fatal attack.

The strikes have killed at least 223 people across 68 reported attacks, according to Saul’s briefing note.