A group of US senators have called for a legal review of President Donald Trump’s attacks on alleged cartel boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The renewed concerns arose after the WashingtonPost reported Friday that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had issued an order to kill survivors from one of the ships set on fire in an earlier attack.
“If that reporting is true, it is a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s laws of war, as well as international laws about how you treat people who are in those circumstances. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it is true.” Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, told CBS News on Sunday.
Kaine added that he and some of his colleagues were “deeply concerned” about “the whole legal reason for the strikes.” He had previously tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would prevent Trump from attacking Venezuela without congressional approval.
Mike Turner, a Republican from Ohio, told CBS “There are very serious concerns in Congress about the attacks on the so-called drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the legal justification that has been given.”
Although Hegseth dismissed the Post’s report as “fake news,” he reiterated that the strikes were intended “stop deadly drugs, destroy narco-boats and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people.”
Trump has accused Venezuela’s left-wing government of aiding cartels and threatened attacks on the country. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denied any links to organized crime and warned the US against launching a new “crazy war.”
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