– Europe Press/Contact/Mc2 Daniel Ruiz/US Navy
Madrid, December 2 (European Press) –
The United States on Monday confirmed and defended the legality of the second attack against survivors of the first bombing launched by its forces, in September, against a ship in the Caribbean Sea, in which all 11 crew members died, but denied that Defense Minister Pete Hegseth had issued this order.
White House spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt was asked at a news conference whether the administration under Donald Trump denied this second attack or whether Hegseth gave the order. He replied, “The latter is true,” before reading a brief statement in which he said that the head of the Pentagon “authorized Admiral (Frank) Bradley to carry out these attacks.”
In this way, the White House blamed the current commander of US Special Operations for ending the lives of survivors. He stressed that “Admiral Bradley was the one who gave the order to launch a second attack and he was fully authorized to do so,” stressing that he “acted within the framework of his authority and the law, and directed the operation to ensure the destruction of the ship and eliminate the threat facing the United States.”
“This administration has designated these drug terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations,” Leavitt added in his own appendix to the statement, saying that “the president has the right to eliminate them if they threaten the United States and if they bring in illegal drugs that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is exactly what they are doing.”
Likewise, he denied that Hegseth had ordered that there be no survivors in the boat attacks, though he reiterated that Trump “has the authority to kill” alleged drug traffickers who, according to Washington, are on the boats.
However, the presidential spokeswoman was questioned about the specific legislation that justified the killing of survivors, and she responded that the attack “was carried out in self-defense to protect Americans in the vital interests of the United States, (…) in international waters and in accordance with the law of armed conflict.”
Despite what the White House defends, the Law of War Manual issued by the Department of Defense states in point seven of Title IV of its fifth chapter that “it is prohibited to conduct hostilities with the aim of having no survivors, or threatening the adversary by depriving him of his quarters,” based on “both humanitarian and military considerations.”
However, Levitt, when asked about the contents of the evidence, insisted on the legality of the operation. He stressed that “Admiral Bradley acted properly, within his authority and the law regulating the attack, to ensure the complete destruction of the ship and eliminate the threat of terrorists trafficking drugs to the United States,” referring to the Ministry of Defense “to ask any further questions about its reasons.”
The White House thus defended the actions of the US military, which, according to information from US media such as The Washington Post or The Intercept, after firing on the boat the first time and noticing that at least two people survived, attacked again to end the lives of the eleven people on board.
This was the first attack against a ship in the Caribbean Sea of many that followed and which, along with those executed in the eastern Pacific under the same pretexts, accumulated at least 83 deaths.
One of them, in October, left two survivors, who were later rescued and returned to Colombia and Ecuador, although a White House spokesman denied knowledge of any changes related to the treatment of survivors in the aforementioned operations.