Experts in international and U.S. domestic law told an inter-American human rights organization on Friday that the Pentagon’s campaign of blowing up boats it suspected of smuggling drugs in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean was illegal.
The U.S. military has blown up 45 small vessels, killing at least 157 people, in six months of strikes since September. In announcing each strike, the military has cited unspecified U.S. intelligence that the boats were traveling on known drug-smuggling routes and published video clips of the attacks casting those killed as “narco-terrorists.”
But Ben Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur for protecting fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, accused the United States of “responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phony war on so-called narco-terrorism.”
“Drug trafficking is a crime, not war,” said Mr. Saul, a professor of international law. He also said a portrayal of the suspected drug traffickers as being responsible for “speculative drug overdoses” did not constitute a “permissible law enforcement action in personal self-defense or the defense of others.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took the testimony during a hearing on Friday evening in Guatemala at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U. wants the independent body of the Organization of American States to investigate and condemn the strikes as violating international law.
Jamil Dakwar of the A.C.L.U. said the Pentagon’s attacks were being undertaken without the authorization of Congress and were “in violation of international law on the use of force.”
He said the Trump administration was engaged in a “very troubling, dangerous policy of attacking people on the high seas” and had not been providing any evidence.
In response, Carl Anderson, a legal adviser for the State Department, scolded the commission for holding the hearing. He said it was not competent to review legal claims over the boat bombings, and in particular those involving the laws of war.
Mr. Anderson said that the bombing campaign was part of “the Trump administration’s successful efforts to make the hemisphere safer,” and that the strikes had all taken place in international waters.
He accused the American Civil Liberties Union of manipulatively pursuing the hearing to support a federal lawsuit against the U.S. government over the bombings. He added that because of the litigation, the United States would not respond to the allegations raised by the experts.
Brian Finucane, a former attorney adviser at the State Department, accused the Trump administration of engaging in “a make-believe war, a make-believe armed conflict.”
But he said the killings were “very real” and could violate U.S. laws barring murder on the high seas, conspiracy to commit murder outside the United States and murder under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the legal system governing U.S. forces.
Mr. Finucane, now with the International Crisis Group, said the wars that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had legal justification and came in the context of an ongoing armed conflict. In the boat bombings, he said, the Trump administration has failed to provide a “serious legal justification.”
It was not immediately clear what the panel would do next. A commissioner, Marion Bethel, from the Bahamas, referred to the people killed in the strikes as victims and said it was appropriate for the commission to gather information on the attacks.
The State Department also condemned the hearing in a statement issued on Friday night. The commission, the statement said, “allowed the A.C.L.U. to exploit the hearing to try to force the United States to prematurely disclose arguments and evidence in two cases pending before U.S. federal courts.”
Carol Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base in 2002.
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