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Caribbean Matters: Extrajudicial murder in the Caribbean? [1]

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Date: 2025-09-06

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.

There is plenty to be alarmed about when it comes to the policies and practices of the current cabal in control of our government. The Trump administration’s military saber-rattling around the world seems to be the status quo, and nowhere is it more evident than the latest deadly show being performed in the Caribbean.

I started tracking the U.S.’s shady moves there on Sept. 2. The reports of gunboat deployment and other macho moves toward Venezuela and the Panama Canal did not bode well.

Here are some of the initial reports:

x Why is the trump regime sending a warship to the Caribbean? Would they use a warship to fight drug cartels? Or does his loathsome retribution also extend to Venezuela’s Maduro for taking down trump’s bestie, dictator Bolsorano? www.scmp.com/news/world/a...



[image or embed] — Nina 🇨🇦 (@nima47.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 10:32 AM

Reuters reported that “US builds up forces in Caribbean as officials, experts, ask why”:

U.S. President Donald Trump has said combating drug cartels is a central goal for his administration and U.S. officials have told Reuters that the military efforts aim to address threats from those cartels. Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, said on Friday the military buildup was aimed to "combat and dismantle drug trafficking organizations, criminal cartels and these foreign terrorist organizations in our hemisphere." But it is unclear exactly how the U.S. military presence would disrupt the drug trade. Among other things, most of the seaborne drug trade travels to the United States via the Pacific, not the Atlantic, where the U.S. forces are, and much of what arrives via the Caribbean comes on clandestine flights. Venezuelan officials believe their government might be the real target. In early August, the United States doubled its reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to $50 million over allegations of drug trafficking and links to criminal groups.

CNN News 18 produced a report titled “Trump’s Venezuela Gunboat Diplomacy: Sabre-Rattling Or Prelude To Invasion?”

x YouTube Video

As US warships carrying cruise missiles and marines powered towards Venezuela’s coastline this week, supporters of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, warned a dastardly imperialist plot for an Iraq-style invasion was afoot.“No one will lay their hands on this land!” Maduro thundered, calling on patriots to help repel the supposed regime change operation by joining his “Bolivarian militia”.Donald Trump’s allies posted incendiary social media messages, warning the Venezuelan autocrat the end was nigh. “Your days are seriously numbered,” Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, proclaimed, urging Maduro to buy “a one-way ticket to Moscow”.

No matter your political position on Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, this latest shitshow has been alarming.

x Why is the Draft Dodger-in-Chief trying to drag us into a war with Venezuela? The claim is that drug cartels are so out of control they’ve been designated an international terrorist organization, so we need to send warships. But we’re denying Venezuelan’s asylum claims who fled for their lives. 🤔



[image or embed] — Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) August 31, 2025 at 7:20 PM

Then the story shifted dramatically when the U.S. opened fire on a Venezuelan boat which they claimed was involved in drug trafficking. The Trump regime openly celebrated killing 11 Venezuelans.

Responses to the killings were immediate. Alex Woodward raised the legality issue of the attack for The Independent in “Was Trump’s Venezuelan boat attack a ‘war crime’? Experts say extrajudicial killings violate international law”:

In a video posted to Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, crosshairs hover above a black-and-white image of a speedboat cutting through water. Seconds later, the boat explodes into a ball of flames. The president said defense officials had carried out a strike against 11 “terrorists” from the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, Tuesday morning as part of the administration’s escalating war against drug cartels. Legal experts and former national security officials have disputed the president’s legal authority to launch extrajudicial killings against suspected drug traffickers, raising consequential questions on both the administration’s growing conflict with Venezuela, and the president’s anti-immigration agenda. “There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea,” according to Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at research and advocacy group, Washington Office on Latin America. “Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense.” Lethal force against civilians in international waters “is a war crime if not in self-defense,” according to Isacson. “‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”

Many social media accounts including the one below were not buying the Trump administration’s version of this travesty

x No one is showing any evidence that there were drugs on the boat? // US military kills 11 people in strike on alleged drug boat from Venezuela, Trump says - www.reuters.com/world/americ...



[image or embed] — Patricia Zengerle (@reuterszengerle.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 6:54 PM

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stepped up to cosign this latest outrage. Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, had a starkly different take:

x There it is. The Commander-in-Chief issued an illegal order to the U.S. armed forces within the Southern Command's Area of Responsibility, and the U.S. armed forces carried out that illegal order.

www.state.gov/releases/off...



[image or embed] — Adam Isacson (@adamisacson.com) September 3, 2025 at 9:37 PM

Former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth weighed in at The Guardian: with “Trump’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers sets a dangerous precedent”:

Unless this dangerous precedent is condemned and curtailed, it will enable US authorities to summarily shoot anyone they choose The US military’s killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers traveling by boat in international waters in the Caribbean is an illegal use of war powers to address what should have been a situation of law enforcement. Unless this dangerous precedent is condemned and curtailed, it will enable US authorities to summarily shoot anyone they choose by simply declaring a “war” against them. Last month, it was reported that Donald Trump had signed a secret decree authorizing the Pentagon to use military force against certain designated Latin American drug cartels, claiming that they were “terrorist” organizations. On Tuesday, Trump wrote that on his orders the military had targeted Tren de Aragua “narcoterrorists”, accusing them of “operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro”, the Venezuelan leader, and being “responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere”. No reported attempt was made to interdict and detain the boatload of people. The video accompanying Trump’s statement suggests that the boat was simply blown up. When asked why the boat wasn’t stopped and its occupants arrested, Trump ducked the question and suggested that the killings would force traffickers to think twice before trying to move drugs to the United States. Under international standards for law enforcement, lethal force can be used solely as a last resort to meet an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. That rule makes sense because law-enforcement officials should ordinarily seek to arrest and prosecute criminal suspects. That is the best way to ensure they have committed the offense in question. It also respects the fact that for most crimes, the penalty upon conviction is a prison sentence, not the death penalty – let alone summary killing without trial. Trump has sought to evade those standards by in effect declaring war against Venezuelan drug cartels. Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1971, US presidents have repeatedly referred to a “war on drugs”, but that was a metaphoric war, a rhetorical claim that the effort was important, not a literal war. The distinction is important, because in genuine armed conflicts, opposing combatants can be summarily shot unless they are surrendering or in custody. There is ordinarily no duty to try to capture or arrest them. There was nothing in the encounter in the Caribbean Sea that is indicative of a war. There has been no suggestion that the alleged drug traffickers were firing at US forces or otherwise engaged in what could fairly be described as combat. The US military simply blew them out the water. It wrongly applied wartime rules in what should have been a law-enforcement situation. That Trump calls drug-trafficking suspects “terrorists” doesn’t change the rules for law enforcement. Terrorists are criminals, not combatants. Absent an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, they must be arrested, not shot.

Truthout’s Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg questioned the video being circulated in an article titled “Experts Say Trump Administration’s Deadly Boat Attack Amounts to Extrajudicial Killings”:

“Trump is claiming the right to conduct extra-judicial assassinations,” a civil rights attorney posted on X. The Trump administration has circulated a brief black and white video that it says shows the fatal strike. AP reports that the White House “did not immediately explain how the military determined that those aboard the vessel were Tren de Aragua members.” The outlet also noted that the video “is not clear enough to see if the craft is carrying as many as 11 people” and “did not show any large or clear stashes of drugs inside the boat.” 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.” “Without clear limitations on presidential and military authority, we may find this administration claiming that it can execute alleged drug dealers at home without any judicial process as happened under the Duterte regime in the Philippines,” Warren continued.

Since I am writing this on Thursday, Sept 4 and this post won’t publish until Sept. 6, I’ll be posting updates in the comments section below along with the weekly Caribbean News Roundup. Please join me there to discuss. Do you think these were extrajudicial murders?

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