JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

A US court on Wednes­day heard ar­gu­ments from at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two Trinida­di­an men who are su­ing the Unit­ed States over the deaths of their loved ones dur­ing US at­tacks on sus­pect­ed drug car­tels in the re­gion last year.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights (CCR), the case is be­ing heard in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. The CCR, along with the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union (NY­CLU), has sued the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to com­pel the re­lease of the le­gal ad­vice it re­lied on to jus­ti­fy air strikes against al­leged crim­i­nals des­ig­nat­ed as nar­co-ter­ror­ists.

Wednes­day’s hear­ing was lim­it­ed to the law­suit against the Of­fice of Le­gal Coun­sel (OLC) over its le­gal opin­ion, which the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is re­ly­ing on to jus­ti­fy and gov­ern its cam­paign of lethal strikes on civil­ian boats in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters. The Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) law­suit forms part of a broad­er le­gal chal­lenge brought by the rel­a­tives of Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Sama­roo, 41.

The men, of Las Cuevas and El So­cor­ro re­spec­tive­ly, are be­lieved to have been killed on Oc­to­ber 14, 2025, when a mis­sile struck a small civil­ian boat trav­el­ling from Venezuela to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing the men’s deaths, the re­lease stat­ed: “Since Sep­tem­ber 2, 2025, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s lethal strikes on boats have mur­dered at least 200 civil­ians, in clear vi­o­la­tion of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al law. In ad­di­tion to a law­suit en­forc­ing a FOIA re­quest on the OLC memo, the ACLU and the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights have al­so filed a law­suit on be­half of two fam­i­lies from Trinidad and To­ba­go who are seek­ing re­dress af­ter a US boat strike killed their loved ones, and held a hear­ing at the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights on how the prob­lem­at­ic lethal-strike pol­i­cy vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law and is an un­con­sti­tu­tion­al claim of ex­ec­u­tive pow­er.”

The fam­i­lies filed their law­suit un­der the US Death on the High Seas Act, which al­lows rel­a­tives to sue for deaths oc­cur­ring in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, and the Alien Tort Statute, which per­mits for­eign na­tion­als to seek re­dress in US courts for se­ri­ous vi­o­la­tions of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, SC, has de­fend­ed the at­tack, say­ing he re­ceived a le­gal opin­ion sup­port­ing it. The opin­ion was pro­vid­ed by British King’s Coun­sel Har­ish Salve of Black­stone Cham­bers, Lon­don, who con­clud­ed that the at­tacks could be jus­ti­fied un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law as acts of self-de­fence.

The CCR al­so stat­ed that, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, the US gov­ern­ment is gen­er­al­ly re­quired to dis­close its records to the pub­lic. Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, dur­ing Wednes­day’s hear­ing, the gov­ern­ment’s at­tor­ney ac­knowl­edged that por­tions of the OLC memo’s le­gal analy­sis could be sep­a­rat­ed and re­leased with­out dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion.

The re­lease quot­ed ACLU at­tor­ney Jef­frey Stein as say­ing: “Peo­ple across the coun­try, politi­cians across the aisle, and the fam­i­lies of vic­tims have been de­mand­ing an­swers as to how our gov­ern­ment is jus­ti­fy­ing the cold-blood­ed mur­der of civil­ians. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has mur­dered more than 210 civil­ians with no sound le­gal or moral ba­sis. At a min­i­mum, the ad­min­is­tra­tion must dis­close to the Amer­i­can peo­ple why it thinks this killing spree is law­ful.”