The UN says US strikes on Caribbean drug boats may be crimes against humanity
Over the past several months the US military has carried out a growing campaign of strikes against vessels it suspects of smuggling narcotics through the Caribbean and Pacific, a policy Washington has defended as a necessary escalation against drug-trafficking networks. This week a strike on an alleged smuggling boat killed four people, the latest in a campaign that a United Nations investigation found had, by its count, reached at least 68 such strikes — the great majority of which, UN investigators concluded, were not conducted in self-defense and could amount to crimes against humanity. The finding sharpens a question that has trailed the campaign since it began: whether killing suspected traffickers without capture, trial, or clear evidence of an imminent threat is a lawful use of force or an extrajudicial policy dressed as a war on drugs. The administration has continued to defend the strikes as effective and necessary, even as scrutiny of their legal basis — and of who, exactly, is being killed — grows both at the UN and in US courts.
