USA20 September, 20263 min read
UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul Says US Strikes On Drug Boats Could Be Crimes Against Humanity
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UN Special Rapporteur says US drug-boat strikes breach international law, could be crimes against humanity. The report counts at least 68 strikes in Caribbean and Pacific since September last year.
UN calls serial killings
A UN report by Special Rapporteur Ben Saul concluded that recent US airstrikes on vessels allegedly trafficking drugs breached international law and could constitute crimes against humanity. Saul said the report found that since September last year there had been at least 68 US strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, outside US territorial waters, which killed more than 220 people. Saul said that even if targets could be identified as members of designated terrorist groups, they had not staged an armed attack on the US that would trigger a right to self-defence under international law.
Saul concluded that "There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law," and the BBC reported it had contacted the White House and State Department for a response. The UN Human Rights Council briefing note said "such attacks amount to serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life" and described them as unjustified under multiple bodies of international law.
US says four killed
US Southern Command said it executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean, and it said confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel's active involvement in narco-trafficking. Reuters reported that the US military said it killed four people in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean on Saturday that it alleged was involved in drug trafficking. The US military's statement said it killed four people, and the CBC said the latest incident brought the overall total of dead in the campaign to at least 231 people across 69 strikes since September 2025.
Ben Saul said the US military attacks are contrary to international law and violate the human right to life, and he said the American claims of self-defence fail because the US never presented evidence of the threat of an armed attack from any of the boats. Saul wrote that "drug trafficking is not equivalent to the military attack," and he said the U.S. hasn't established that the Venezuelan government has sent the boats.
Campaign, evidence, and fallout
The US military campaign, known as "Southern Spear," launched in early September, and the BBC said it aimed at removing "narco-terrorists from our hemisphere" and securing the US from "the drugs that are killing our people."
The BBC said Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth previously described the operation as aimed at removing "narco-terrorists from our hemisphere" and securing the US from "the drugs that are killing our people."
The BBC reported that the UN report came two days after the US military said it killed four people in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean, and it said officials have not offered definitive evidence that the vessels targeted are involved in trafficking.
CBC reported that Saul raised concerns about three more vessels that have "sunk in suspicious circumstances without any claim of responsibility," including the Ecuadorian boat Fiorella whose eight to 10 crew members disappeared at sea in January.
CBC said Saul concluded that "The United States military attacks are … contrary to international law, violate the human right to life and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity," and it described how U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said every strike has a legal officer on the deck to determine whether the call is legal.