The families of two Trinidadian men killed in a US strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat have filed a lawsuit against the American government.
Lawyers filed the claim in Boston's federal court on behalf of relatives of Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, among six men killed off the coast of Venezuela on 14 October.
One of the lawyers said in a statement that the strike amounted to lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theatre.
The US has struck 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 carrying drugs that kill Americans.
The US has positioned its operations as a non-international armed conflict with the alleged traffickers, but legal experts say they could be in violation of the laws governing such conflict.
This lawsuit was filed on Tuesday under the Death on the High Seas Act, allowing family members to sue for wrongful deaths on the high seas, and permits foreign citizens to sue in US courts for international law violations.
The case was brought by Joseph's mother and Samaroo's sister, who state the two men were engaged in fishing and farming work in Venezuela when their boat was struck. Joseph's mother Sallycar Korasingh asserted that if the US government believed her son had done something wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him.
The lawsuit claims that the deaths should be classified as wrongful since the men were not participating in military hostilities against the US. The Pentagon has not yet responded to requests for comment.
This case follows a similar incident in which the family of a Colombian man killed in a separate US strike has also taken their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
