U.S. military boat strikes constitute extrajudicial killings, says human rights watchdog

Hu­man Rights Watch (HRW) has pub­lished a de­tailed ques­tion-and-an­swer doc­u­ment in which it analy­ses the le­gal and hu­man rights im­pli­ca­tions of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic.

To date, 26 re­port­ed strikes have un­law­ful­ly killed at least 95 peo­ple, none of whom the U.S. gov­ern­ment has iden­ti­fied.

HRW ex­plained in a state­ment that the ques­tion-and-an­swer (Q&A) doc­u­ment “is in­tend­ed as a re­source for un­der­stand­ing the le­gal and hu­man rights im­pli­ca­tions of the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary cam­paign.”

“The doc­u­ment ex­plains why the strikes con­sti­tute ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings un­der in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law,” HRW not­ed, “and ad­dress­es the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s claims that the US is em­broiled in an armed con­flict with ‘nar­co-ter­ror­ists’.”

The HRW Q&A al­so lays out the Unit­ed States’ oblig­a­tions to in­ves­ti­gate un­law­ful killings, hold ac­count­able those re­spon­si­ble, and pro­vide ef­fec­tive reme­dies.

In ad­di­tion, the hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tion’s guide iden­ti­fies con­crete steps it says the U.S. Con­gress should take.

It notes that these in­clude “hold­ing pub­lic hear­ings, man­dat­ing in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions, and cre­at­ing a se­lect com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­gate le­gal and op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions be­hind the strikes.”