Experts tell BBC Verify US ‘drug boat’ strike may have broken international lawpublished at 14:10 British Summer Time
14:10 BST
Matt Murphy
BBC Verify senior journalist
A strike carried out by US forces on a boat in the Caribbean Sea – which the White House says killed 11 drug traffickers – may have violated international human rights and maritime law, legal experts have told BBC Verify.
Maritime law
The US is not a signatory to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but the Department of Defense has previously said the US should “act in a manner consistent with its provisions”, external.
“Force can be used to stop a boat but generally this should be non-lethal measures,” said Luke Moffett of Queens University Belfast, and the use of aggressive tactics must be “reasonable and necessary in self-defence”.
Human rights law
Prof Moffett also says the use of force could amount to an “extrajudicial arbitrary killing” and “a fundamental violation of human rights”.
Under Article 2(4) of the UN charter, countries can resort to force when under attack and are exercising their military in self-defence.
But Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin told BBC Verify the US operation “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.
US constitutional law
As well as international law, US domestic law has a role to play here. The US constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war.
However, Article II of the US constitution says “the president shall be Commander in Chief of the Army” and some constitutional experts have suggested that this grants the president the power to authorise strikes against military targets.
But it is unclear whether that provision extends to the use of force against non-state actors such as drug cartels.