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By Nate Raymond<\/p>\n
BOSTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Family members of two men killed in a U.S. missile strike against a suspected drug boat near Venezuela filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging the pair were \u200bmurdered in a “manifestly unlawful” military campaign targeting civilian vessels.<\/p>\n
Civil rights lawyers filed the lawsuit in Boston’s federal court, \u200cmarking the first court challenge to one of the 36 U.S. missile strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean authorized by President \u200cDonald Trump’s administration that have killed more than 120 people since September.<\/p>\n
Family members of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo\u2014two Trinidadian men who were among six killed during an October 14 strike\u2014in the lawsuit say the two men did fishing and farm work in Venezuela and had been returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, Trinidad when they were attacked.<\/p>\n
“These are lawless killings in cold blood; killings \u2060for sport and killings for theater, which \u200cis why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless,” Baher Azmy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said \u200din a statement.<\/p>\n
His group and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the novel lawsuit under the Death on the High Seas Act, a maritime law that allows family members to sue for wrongful deaths occurring on the high seas, and the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 \u200blaw that allows foreign citizens to sue in U.S. courts for violations of international law.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed by Lenore \u200cBurnley, Joseph’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister, and seeks only damages from the U.S. government for the two deaths, not an injunction that would prevent further strikes.<\/p>\n
But the case could provide an avenue for a court to assess whether the October 14 strike was legal.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has framed the attacks carried out under U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction as a war with drug cartels, alleging they were armed groups. \u2060It has said its attacks comply with international rules known as the \u200blaw of war or the law of armed conflict.<\/p>\n
But the attacks have \u200bdrawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, which has not authorized attacks on the drug cartels, and condemnation from human rights groups. Legal experts have previously said the drug cartels do not fit the \u200daccepted international definition of an \u2060armed group.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s lawsuit argues that the killing of Joseph and Samaroo outside of an armed conflict, while they were not taking part in military hostilities against the U.S. amounted to murder and should be deemed a wrongful death \u2060on the high seas and an extrajudicial killing under international law.<\/p>\n
“If the U.S. government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, \u200ccharged, and detained him, not murdered him,” Korasingh said in a statement. “They must be held accountable.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nate \u200cRaymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n