On Tuesday, President Trump said that the United States had carried out a strike against a Venezuelan boat carrying drugs and killed 11 “terrorists.”  He said the strike “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States.” Trump said the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua cartel and was carrying drugs bound for the US.

The strike represents a significant departure from traditional drug interdiction efforts. In the past, US authorities focused on seizing drugs and identifying suspects to build a criminal case. 

BBC Verify reached out to a range of experts in international and maritime law, with several saying that US may have acted illegally in attacking the vessel.

The US is not a signatory to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but the US military’s legal advisors have previously said that the US should “act in a manner consistent with its provisions”.

Under the convention, countries agree not to interfere with vessels operating in international waters. There are limited exceptions to this which allow a state to seize a ship, such as a “hot pursuit” where a vessel is chased from a country’s waters into the high seas.

“Force can be used to stop a boat but generally this should be non-lethal measures,” Prof Luke Moffett of Queens University Belfast said.

But he added that the use of aggressive tactics must be “reasonable and necessary in self-defence where there is immediate threat of serious injury or loss of life to enforcement officials”, noting that the US moves were likely “unlawful under the law of the sea”.

Experts have also questioned whether the killing of the alleged members of the Tren de Aragua cartel could contravene international law on the use of force.

Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and deploying their military in self-defence. Trump has previously accused the Tren de Aragua cartel of conducting irregular warfare against the US, and the state department has designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify that the US actions “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point”.

“The fact that US officials describe the individuals killed by the US strike as narco-terrorists does not transform them into lawful military targets,” he said. “The US is not engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela or the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.”

“Not only does the strike appear to have violated the prohibition on the use of force, it also runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law.”

Prof Moffett said that the use of force in this case could amount to an “extrajudicial arbitrary killing” and “a fundamental violation of human rights. Labelling everyone a terrorist does not make them a lawful target and enables states to side-step international law,” he said.

“There is zero evidence of self-defense here. Looks like a massacre of civilians at sea,” according to Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at research and advocacy group, Washington Office on Latin America. “Even if they had drugs aboard, that’s not a capital offense.”

Lethal force against civilians in international waters “is a war crime if not in self-defense,” according to Isacson. “‘Not yielding to pursuers’ or ‘suspected of carrying drugs’ doesn’t carry a death sentence.”

Charlie Savage, writing in the New York Times, observes:  “By ordering the U.S. military to summarily kill a group of people aboard what he said was a drug-smuggling boat, President Trump used the military in a way that had no clear legal precedent or basis, according to specialists in the laws of war and executive power.

“Mr. Trump is claiming the power to shift maritime counterdrug efforts from law enforcement rules to wartime rules. The police arrest criminal suspects for prosecution and cannot instead simply gun suspects down, except in rare circumstances where they pose an imminent threat to someone. Standards constraining when presidents and nations can lawfully use wartime force.

“After breaking new ground by labeling drug cartels as “terrorists,” the president is now redefining the peacetime criminal problem of drug trafficking as an armed conflict, and telling the U.S. military to treat even suspected low-level drug smugglers as combatants.

“But the trafficking of an illegal consumer product is not a capital offense, and Congress has not authorized armed conflict against cartels.

“That raises the question of whether Mr. Trump has legitimate authority to tell the military to summarily kill people it suspects are smuggling drugs — and whether the administration allowed career military lawyers to weigh in.

“It’s difficult to imagine how any lawyers inside the Pentagon could have arrived at a conclusion that this was legal rather than the very definition of murder under international law rules that the Defense Department has long accepted,” said Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked as a Pentagon lawyer in 2015 and 2016.”

Trump’s actions could be seen as an explicit grab at authoritarian power.

Recently, the US has deployed eight Navy warships to the Caribbean and Pacific to enhance counter-narcotics operations near Central and South American countries. The move, intended to counter drug cartels, has heightened tensions with Venezuela.

The Trump regime has claimed that Venezuelan cocaine shipments are contributing to overdose deaths in the United States and that cocaine is often laced with fentanyl. 

Venezuela is not, however, a major producer of cocaine but serves as a transit hub for it. The country’s long, porous border with Colombia — the world’s largest producer — and long coastline provide traffickers access to global markets.

Estimates by the United States in 2020 said that 200 to 250 metric tons of cocaine flowed through Venezuela annually — roughly 10 to 13 percent of the global supply. But other countries have a much bigger hand in moving cocaine. In 2018, 1,400 metric tons of cocaine moved through Guatemala, U.S. data shows. And Venezuela’s domestic cocaine cultivation is negligible, experts said.

Venezuela plays virtually no role in the fentanyl trade. Fentanyl is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department, and the Congressional Research Service. Mexico is close to the U.S. market, and Mexican cartels already control many fentanyl smuggling routes.
 
There is no proof that it is manufactured or trafficked from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America. While U.S. cocaine sometimes shows traces of fentanyl, according to the D.E.A. and academic studies, experts say any mixing would happen in Mexico or inside the United States, not in South America.