Two US F-18 fighter jets flew into Venezuelan airspace over the waters of the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday for about 40 minutes, aviation tracking page Flightradar24 shows. The incursion comes as tensions are at their highest due to fears that the United States may carry out, as threatened by its President, Donald Trump, some form of military action on the territory of the Caribbean country.
The intrusion occurred around noon local (1600 GMT) in waters about 160 kilometers northeast of Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second most populous city. The two planes made several corkscrew turns before heading towards a point near Aruba, where the American aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, the largest and most modern in the world, could be docked. This ship has F-18 aircraft among its crew.
The Ford has been in the area since last month to reinforce the large naval deployment that the United States has maintained in the Caribbean since August and which includes nearly 15,000 soldiers. The Trump administration maintains that the purpose of the military presence is to combat drug trafficking cartels as part of Operation Lanza del Sur, which has attacked at least 22 suspected drug boats and killed at least 87 people. But Venezuela maintains that it is a campaign aimed at forcing the fall of the Chavista regime.
A group of civil rights organizations has sued the U.S. government in a New York court to present the “legal justification” for its attacks on drug boats in international waters in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Many experts, legislators and human rights organizations denounce the illegal nature of these attacks.
The lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the latter’s New York branch (NYCLU) was filed to “force disclosure” of a legal opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), part of the Department of Justice. US media published that this opinion considers the attacks – at least 22 have been carried out so far – as legal acts within the framework of an “armed conflict” with drug cartels considered international terrorist organizations and their members as enemy combatants.
The plaintiffs denounce in a press release that this notice “aims to immunize personnel who authorized or participated in these unlawful attacks from future criminal charges” linked to these attacks, which, according to the groups, “would otherwise be simple homicides”. The Trump administration has so far refused to release the contents of that advisory, although it was presented to a group of lawmakers in mid-November.
The trial comes amid growing uncertainty over whether Washington will launch attacks on Venezuelan territory, and as controversy persists over what happened in the first U.S. military attack on an alleged drug boat, which had eleven people on board. Just as Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the release of the full video of the attack, in which U.S. forces launched a second strike in which the two survivors of the first died, United States President Donald Trump has acknowledged seeing the footage and says that in it it appears that the two crew members are trying to right part of the boat before being executed.
“It’s not pretty,” admits the American president. Trump said last week that he would have no problem with the video being made public, although he said at the time that he did not know exactly what it contained. But on Monday, and after his administration expressed reluctance to make it known this weekend, he himself backed down.
In a hostile response to the same reporter to whom he had assured his willingness to publish it, Trump claimed he never said that and insulted the reporter live during an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. In his new role, the US president has delegated to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the task of deciding whether the full images will be revealed. In revealing the attack in a social media post on September 2, Trump included seconds-long footage in which the boat was seen exploding during the first attack. But there is no mention of a second blow, which occurred three quarters of an hour later.
The admiral who gave the order to repeat the attack, Frank Bradley, commander of the special operations unit, appeared in Congress last week to brief a closed-door group of congressmen and senators on what happened next. Attendees at the press conference were shown the full footage, which one Democratic congressman, Jim Hines, described as “the most disturbing thing” he had seen in his political career.
“It looked like they were trying to turn around, but I’m not getting involved in that. That’s his (Hegseth’s) thing,” Trump said in the Politico interview, regarding whether the footage should be released. He also emphasizes that he leaves it up to the head of the Pentagon whether or not to testify before Congress about what happened. “I would tell him to do it if he wants to. He does a great job,” he said. In the interview, the American president refuses to specify whether he would deploy American soldiers on the ground in the event of an intervention in Venezuela, even if he does not rule it out. And it threatens to expand actions to two other countries where drug cartels are established: Mexico and Colombia.
According to what people present at the session told American media, the video shows how the two survivors cling to the larger half of the two in which the boat was broken and try to right it, without success. They also try to climb onto the overturned hull, but they slip again and again. During this time, they wave their arms, which, according to some versions, looks like an attempt to capitulate or a request for help.
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