Fishermen preparing to sail from the port of Cedros in Trinidad and Tobago. Photo: EFE/Andrea De Silva.
Relatives of two Trinidadian citizens killed in a US missile strike in the Caribbean have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Trump administration. This litigation, the first of its kind, seeks justice for the brutality of the unauthorized military campaign that, under the pretext of a “war on drugs,” has claimed more than 120 lives in the Pacific and the Caribbean since last September.
The lawsuit asserts that Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two workers who earned their living in fishing and agriculture in Venezuela, were returning to their home in Trinidad and Tobago on October 14, 2025, when a US missile struck their vessel.
“If the US government believed Rishi had done something wrong, they should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not killed him,” said Sallycar Korasingh, Samaroo’s sister.
According to the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Boston, the victims were civilians, not drug traffickers, and were the victims of a “manifestly illegal” operation. Baher Azmy, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, bluntly described it as: “These are cold-blooded, unlawful murders; murders for sport and murders for show.”
The Trump administration, through its Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has attempted to cloak these attacks in the guise of the “law of armed conflict,” claiming they target “armed groups.” However, legal experts and human rights organizations have refuted this narrative: drug cartels do not constitute, under international law, an armed group as defined by the law of war. Even more seriously, the US Congress never authorized this campaign of targeted killings in international waters, placing it in a legal and moral limbo.
In this regard, the lawsuit is based on two US laws: the Death on the High Seas Act and the Foreign Tort Statute of 1789. However, the case goes beyond the families’ pursuit of compensation. The Boston court will have to decide whether it considers the doctrine applied by Trump to be legal—whereby Washington acts as judge, jury, and executioner in any corner of the globe, trampling on the sovereignty of nations like Venezuela, in whose territorial waters the attack occurred, and disregarding the right to life of citizens of countries in the Global South.
To date, the attacks on vessels, which began in September 2025, have resulted in the deaths of more than 120 people, in incidents described by various experts as extrajudicial killings by the United States. The most recent attack occurred on January 24, resulting in two deaths and one crew member injured.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JB/SH
