A damning report by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul concludes that the United States military's campaign of airstrikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels, known as Operation Southern Spear, violates international law and plausibly constitutes crimes against humanity. The campaign has killed at least 234 people across 70 strikes since September 2025. While the Trump administration justifies the operations as self-defense against narco-terrorists, Saul and other legal experts reject this framework, noting that the unarmed crews pose no military threat to the U.S.
Operation Southern Spear Boat Strikes
- ▪A United States military strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea on September 19, 2026, killed four people, which the U.S. Southern Command stated were narco-terrorists actively involved in drug trafficking.
- ▪The United States military campaign of missile and airstrikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, known as Operation Southern Spear, has killed at least 234 people across 70 strikes since September 2025.
UN Findings on Boat Strikes
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul highlighted a September 2, 2025, strike that killed two survivors on a partially destroyed vessel as a violation of the right to life and the international duty to rescue at sea
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul published a report concluding there are reasonable grounds to believe that 68 U.S. boat strikes killing 223 people between September 2025 and August 2026 constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law.
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul called for internal investigations into the U.S. Operation Southern Spear boat strikes and urged that commanders involved in the operation be held accountable
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul concluded that the U.S. boat strikes under Operation Southern Spear violate the human right to life and are unjustifiable under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, and international counterterrorism law
Debate Over U.S. Legal Justifications
- ▪The Donald Trump administration has justified Operation Southern Spear boat strikes by claiming the United States is in an armed conflict with narco-terrorists and has a right to self-defense against what it characterizes as an armed attack on U.S. territory
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul rejected Operation Southern Spear's self-defense justification, stating that the boat crews were not militarily armed, lacked the capacity to launch military attacks, and had not mounted any armed attack against the United States
- ▪U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated in a July 2026 Senate hearing that every military strike undergoes a legal assessment by a legal officer on deck to determine its legality.
- ▪The Donald Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act to declare that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is conducting an invasion and irregular warfare against the United States through drug transport.
Abduction of Venezuelan President
- ▪The United States military continued its boat strikes even after seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a January 2026 operation and establishing a working relationship with interim President Delcy Rodríguez.
- ▪United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul challenged the legal validity of the U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026, which resulted in the deaths of 75 people.
Story comments
Loading comments…