Families Sue US Over Deadly Boat Strike Off Venezuela Coast
Two Trinidadian families file a wrongful‑death lawsuit against the US after a deadly military strike off Venezuela, challenging the Death on the High Seas Act and legality.
The families of two Trinidadians killed in a US attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat have filed a lawsuit against the US government.
Lawyers filed the claim in federal court in Boston on October 14 on behalf of relatives of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaru, two of six people killed off the coast of Venezuela.
The attack was "cold-blooded, unlawful killings; killings for sport and killings for show," a lawyer said in a statement.
The US has attacked at least 36 vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since September, killing more than 120 people. The Trump administration has said it is targeting "narco-terrorists" who are transporting drugs that kill Americans.
The US has characterized its operations as a non-international armed conflict with alleged traffickers, but legal experts say they may be violating the laws governing such conflicts.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday under the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows family members to sue for wrongful death on the high seas, and a law that allows foreign nationals to sue in US courts for violations of international law.
The case was filed by Joseph's mother and Samaru's sister, who say the two men worked in fishing and farming in Venezuela and were returning to Trinidad and Tobago when their boat was attacked.
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Joseph's mother, Sallycar Korasingh, said that if the US government believed her son had done something wrong, "they should have arrested him, charged him, and taken him into custody, not murdered him."
The lawsuit argues that the killings should be considered wrongful deaths because the men were not engaged in military hostilities against the United States. The Pentagon has not yet responded to requests for comment.
This incident comes after the family of a Colombian man, who was killed in a separate US attack, took their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
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