U.S. to Repatriate Survivors of Its Strike on Suspected Drug Vessel

Politics|U.S. to Repatriate Survivors of Its Strike on Suspected Drug Vessel

The Trump administration has decided to repatriate two survivors of a deadly U.S. strike this week on suspected drug runners in the Caribbean Sea rather than prosecute them or hold them in military detention, people with knowledge of the matter said on Saturday.

The men who survived were being returned to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador, the people with knowledge of the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational and diplomatic matters. It was not clear if the government of either nation would prosecute the men upon their return, or simply release them.

President Trump has previously described people aboard suspected drug-smuggling boats, which the United States has targeted in several deadly airstrikes since early September, as “unlawful combatants.” He has claimed the authority, widely disputed by legal experts, to summarily kill such suspects in military strikes as if they were enemy soldiers in a war.

It was a sharp break from the traditional handling of maritime smuggling, in which the Coast Guard would intercept boats and arrest people if suspicions proved accurate.

The decision to transfer the two survivors, however, was in line with the Coast Guard’s practice of repatriating or handing off to friendly countries people who were intercepted outside the United States as suspected traffickers.

It also avoided the dilemma of what to do with the first people captured in what Mr. Trump has declared a formal armed conflict against drug cartels. Holding them as indefinite wartime detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could have opened the door to a court’s reviewing whether this really is a war.

The two were the only survivors of a military strike late Thursday on a so-called semi-submersible vessel that was traveling partially below the water, a familiar profile of smugglers in the Caribbean. Three U.S. officials with knowledge of the operation said Special Operations aircraft had fired on the vessel in the southern Caribbean after U.S. intelligence analysts assessed it was carrying some kind of drugs.

Minutes after the strike, analysts watching on a video feed from a surveillance aircraft noticed what appeared to be at least two survivors bobbing in the water amid the smoldering wreckage of the craft, the officials said. There were also several floating bales, they added.

The Times has not seen the surveillance video. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Navy and Coast Guard helicopters were dispatched to the scene, and the two men were rescued and brought to the nearby amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima, they said. The ship has medical facilities.

On Friday, U.S. officials confirmed the strike and that the two survivors were being held on the Navy vessel. Mr. Trump also confirmed to reporters that there had been a strike on what he called a submarine, but did not address questions about survivors.

The attack on the semi-submersible was the sixth known strike by the U.S. military on vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea since Sept. 2. The administration has said the first five attacks killed 27 people. Officials have said at least two men were killed in Friday’s strike, although the administration has not yet announced official findings.

On Saturday, the officials said, the Pentagon transferred legal custody of the two detainees to the State Department, which was preparing to repatriate them. Their physical whereabouts and the mechanics of any impending transfer were not immediately known.

The apparent resolution of the fate of the two survivors, requiring diplomatic contacts, comes amid a large military buildup in the region that has focused on drug cartels and criminal gangs based in Venezuela.

The Trump administration has justified its attacks on drug smuggling suspects in the Caribbean as a formal armed conflict and as national self-defense, but without offering an explanation for how it can legitimately treat the crime of drug smuggling as if it were an armed attack or combat.

The administration has also cited the fact that about 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses each year in the United States. But the surge in overdoses has been driven by fentanyl, which comes from Mexico, not South America.

As of midday Saturday, the governments in Colombia and Ecuador had not responded to questions of whether arrangements were underway to repatriate their citizens.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Edward Wong and Genevieve Glatsky contributed reporting.