US military to move survivors of strike on alleged drug boat in Caribbean to nearby countries | Trump administration
The Trump administration is considering sending the two survivors of Thursday’s Caribbean strike abroad rather than placing them in long-term military detention, four U.S. officials and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday.
The source, who like U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity, said survivors were being sent to Colombia and Ecuador.
The US military staged a helicopter rescue for survivors on Thursday after the attack on their semi-submersible ship on suspicion of trafficking illegal narcotics. The strike killed the other two crew members on board, sources told Reuters on Friday.
The U.S. military transported the survivors to a U.S. warship in the Caribbean, where they were held until at least Friday evening. It was unclear whether they had already left the ship Saturday morning.
U.S. officials, who requested anonymity, expect the survivors to eventually be returned to their home countries.
In a statement on Truth Social, Donald Trump said: “It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG SUBMARINE that was sailing to the United States on a transit route well known for drug trafficking. »
The president added that U.S. intelligence confirmed that the boat “was loaded primarily with fentanyl and other illegal narcotics” and that “there were four known narcoterrorists on board the vessel.”
“The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia for detention and prosecution,” Trump said.
The decision to send survivors home means the U.S. military will not have to grapple with thorny legal questions surrounding military detention of suspected drug traffickers, whose alleged crimes do not clearly fall under the laws of war, legal experts say.
Speaking Friday, Trump told reporters the strike targeted “a drug-carrying submarine built specifically to transport massive quantities of drugs.”
He did not say how many people were killed or survived the strike.
The Pentagon has not yet provided any details about the attack and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has said previous strikes killed 27 people, sparking concern among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers who question whether they are following the laws of war.
The strikes come against the backdrop of a U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean, which includes guided-missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and about 6,500 troops, as Trump escalates the confrontation with the Venezuelan government.
On Wednesday, Trump revealed that he had authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, reinforcing speculation in Caracas that the United States would try to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro has denied any links to drug trafficking and denounced the US shipping strikes as a pretext for regime change, presenting them as violations of sovereignty and international law.
In a letter this week to the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council, seen by Reuters, Venezuela’s U.N. ambassador, Samuel Moncada, demanded that the U.N. determine that U.S. strikes off its coast are illegal and issue a statement supporting Venezuela’s sovereignty.
