Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

With the Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Gus­tavio Petro rais­ing con­cerns about the Sep­tem­ber 2 mil­i­tary strike by the US on a ves­sel leav­ing Venezuela, which re­port­ed­ly left 11 peo­ple dead, new de­tails are rais­ing doubts about the le­gal­i­ty and ne­ces­si­ty of the op­er­a­tion.

A re­port in the New York Times dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 10 re­port­ed that US of­fi­cials briefed on the strike said the ves­sel ap­peared to have al­tered course and even turned back be­fore the at­tack be­gan.

De­spite this ma­noeu­vre, the US mil­i­tary en­gaged re­peat­ed­ly, sink­ing the ves­sel and killing 11 peo­ple be­lieved to be on board.

The ar­ti­cle said: “The dis­clo­sures pro­vide new de­tails about an op­er­a­tion that was a star­tling de­par­ture from tra­di­tion­al drug in­ter­dic­tion ef­forts, es­ca­lat­ing Pres­i­dent (Don­ald) Trump’s use of the mil­i­tary for mat­ters typ­i­cal­ly han­dled by law en­force­ment. Le­gal spe­cial­ists have dis­put­ed that it was law­ful for the mil­i­tary, on Pres­i­dent Trump’s or­ders, to tar­get and kill drug smug­gling sus­pects as if they were com­bat­ants in a war.”

Wash­ing­ton main­tains the boat was trans­port­ing nar­cotics bound for the US and linked the dead men to the Venezue­lan crim­i­nal net­work known as Tren de Aragua.

Ac­cord­ing to the New York Times ar­ti­cle, le­gal schol­ars and for­mer naval of­fi­cials have ques­tioned whether Trump’s as­ser­tion that drug smug­gling con­sti­tutes an armed at­tack un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law has any ba­sis.

“If some­one is re­treat­ing, where’s the ‘im­mi­nent threat’ then?” said Rear Ad­mi­ral Don­ald J Guter, a re­tired top judge ad­vo­cate gen­er­al for the Navy from 2000 to 2002.

“Where’s the ‘self-de­fence’? They are gone if they ever ex­ist­ed, which I don’t think they did.”

Rear Ad­mi­ral James E McPher­son, an­oth­er for­mer Navy judge ad­vo­cate gen­er­al who lat­er served in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, al­so doubt­ed the le­gal grounds.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the White House de­clined to con­firm whether the boat had in­deed turned back be­fore the as­sault, with spokes­woman An­na Kel­ly re­it­er­at­ing in­stead that “Pres­i­dent Trump act­ed in line with the laws of armed con­flict to pro­tect our coun­try.”

A re­port in the Wall Street Jour­nal al­so ques­tioned the le­gal­i­ty of the strike.

This is why in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les yes­ter­day called on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to make pub­lic, crit­i­cal de­tails sur­round­ing the re­cent US airstrike on the Venezue­lan ves­sel, if the in­ci­dent in fact oc­curred.

“There is a lot of spec­u­la­tion tak­ing place, and no one is sure ex­act­ly of what hap­pened, and we are left won­der­ing if it took place here (T&T wa­ters) or out­side, and I think that is ba­si­cal­ly the prob­lem. One has to prop­er­ly es­tab­lish that it took place in our wa­ters,” Gon­za­les said.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Chief cor­re­spon­dent of El País in Bo­gotá, Juan Diego Que­sas­da, who said he does not ex­pect fur­ther es­ca­la­tion from Colom­bia’s pres­i­dent.

“Legal­ly, it could be a crime that should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, but I sus­pect the good re­la­tion­ship be­tween Don­ald Trump and your coun­try will make the mat­ter fall by the way­side.”

Asked if he be­lieved Pres­i­dent Petro’s com­ment could sig­nal a fall­out in re­la­tions be­tween the coun­tries, Que­sa­da was doubt­ful.

“I don’t think so, be­cause for Colom­bia, T&T is not im­por­tant and they are not con­cerned with this lo­cal is­sue. There is a good re­la­tion­ship, but it’s not a big deal for Colom­bia. Colom­bia is think­ing about Amer­i­ca, Venezuela, Ecuador, all these coun­tries, but they don’t want to have a bad re­la­tion­ship with T&T.”

He em­pha­sised that while the con­tro­ver­sy has sparked diplo­mat­ic ques­tions, it is un­like­ly to de­vel­op in­to a pro­longed re­gion­al dis­pute.