Families of two men killed in Trump’s military boat strikes sue US government

Civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the United States government on Tuesday on behalf of the families of two men from a small fishing village in Trinidad who were killed in a US military airstrike on a small boat in the Caribbean Sea on 14 October.The lawsuit, shared in advance with the Guardian, says that Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, both of Las Cuevas, Trinidad, were returning to Trinidad from Venezuela when they and four other people were killed in the strike. It was the fifth attack announced by the White House under Donald Trump’s campaign against the small go-fast boats the administration claims are connected to cartels and gangs.The suit was filed four days after the administration announced the 36th such boat attack on Friday, this one in the eastern Pacific. The death toll of the boat strikes stands around at least 117 people dead so far.The lawsuit said the strikes were illegal. “These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification,” the lawsuit said. “Thus, they were simply murder, ordered at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command.” Legal scholars have said the strikes, launched against civilians in boats far from the US, are violations of domestic and international law. The Trump administration maintains they are legal, under a secret opinion written by the justice department that argues the US is in an armed conflict with cartels and that the laws of war apply to the strikes.The suit over the October attack was filed in federal district court in Massachusetts under admiralty law, which addresses maritime disputes and violations, and was brought by Lenore Burnley, Chad’s mother, and Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister. It cites the Alien Torts Act, which allows foreign nationals to sue in US courts in certain cases, and the Death on the High Seas Act.Lenore Burnley, the mother of Chad Joseph. Photograph: Courtesy of the ACLUIn a separate case in December, the family of a Colombian national, Alejandro Carranza Medina, who was killed in another one of the strikes, filed a human rights complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States.But the case filed on Tuesday is the first federal lawsuit filed in connection with the attacks. Families of the dead men are represented by attorneys from the ACLU, Seton Hall University, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.Jonathan Hafetz, of Seton Hall law school, said the lawsuit is the first of its kind because the US has never conducted this type of bombing campaign. “This is uncharted water. Never before in the country’s history has the government asserted this type power,” he said in an interview. “This is a clear example of unlawful killing by the Unites States. The US is assuming the prerogative to kill victims in international waters.”In a press release, Korasingh is quoted as saying: “If the US government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him.”Little is known about the attack that killed Samaroo and Joseph. That day, Trump posted a video of a small open vessel boat floating in the water but not moving, when it was suddenly engulfed in flames. He wrote on social media: “Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO).”Trump said “six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike”, but did not explain which group authorities believed they were affiliated with, and did not mention whether authorities believed there were either drugs or guns aboard.