WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday that he backs a September 2 decision to launch a second strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean.
“I fully support that strike,” Hegseth said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. “I would have made the same call myself.”
A video of the attack was shown to members of Congress on Capitol Hill behind closed doors on Thursday, days after reports surfaced that the commander overseeing the operation ordered a second strike to take out two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s direction that everyone should be killed.
Officials from President Donald Trump’s administration have since said that Hegseth did not order the additional strike, and that Admiral Frank Bradley, who led the Joint Special Operations Command at the time, concluded the boat’s wreckage must be neutralized because it might contain cocaine.
Hegseth on Saturday repeated his account of the day, saying that he had seen the first strike on September 2, but then left the room to attend another meeting. He declined to say whether the administration would release the full video, calling the issue “under review.”
The September 2 attack was the first of 22 on vessels in the southern Caribbean and Pacific carried out by the US military as part of what the Trump administration calls a campaign to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.
The strikes have killed 87 people, with one carried out in the eastern Pacific on Thursday.
Accounts of the September 2 strikes have prompted concerns that US forces carried out a war crime.
The video of the attack shown to lawmakers showed two men clinging to wreckage after their vessel was destroyed, according to two sources familiar with the imagery.
They were shirtless, unarmed and carried no visible communications equipment.
The Defense Department’s Law of War Manual forbids attacks on combatants who are incapacitated, unconscious or shipwrecked, as long as they abstain from hostilities and do not attempt to escape. The manual cites firing upon shipwreck survivors as an example of a “clearly illegal” order that should be refused.
The Trump administration has framed the attacks as a war with drug cartels, calling them armed groups and saying the drugs being carried to the United States kill Americans.
Hegseth says he would have ordered second strike on Caribbean vessel
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Hegseth says he would have ordered second strike on Caribbean vessel
- The Trump administration has framed the attacks as a war with drug cartels, calling them armed groups and saying the drugs being carried to the United States kill Americans
France releases suspected Russia ‘shadow fleet’ tanker after fine
- The ship is suspected of being part of a shadow fleet that carries oil for countries such as Russia and Iran
- “The tanker Grinch is leaving French waters after paying several million euros and enduring a costly three-week immobilization in Fos-sur-Mer,” Barrot said
MARSEILLE: France on Tuesday released a tanker called Grinch suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” after its owner paid a fine of several million euros, a minister said.
French forces and their allies boarded the oil tanker last month between Spain and Morocco after it started its journey in Russia. It was escorted to a port near the southern city of Marseille.
Ship tracking websites MarineTraffic and VesselFinder said the vessel had been flying a Comoros flag.
The ship is suspected of being part of a shadow fleet that carries oil for countries such as Russia and Iran in violation of US sanctions.
“The tanker Grinch is leaving French waters after paying several million euros and enduring a costly three-week immobilization in Fos-sur-Mer,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on X.
Russia has reportedly built up a flotilla of old tankers of opaque ownership to get around sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and the G7 group of nations, over Moscow’s 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions, aimed at limiting Moscow’s revenues to pursue its war, have shut out many tankers carrying Russian oil from Western insurance and shipping systems.
“Evading European sanctions comes at a price. Russia will no longer be able to bankroll its war with impunity through a shadow fleet off our shores,” Barrot said.
The public prosecutor’s office and regional authorities said that, “as part of a guilty plea procedure, the company that owns the vessel was sentenced by the Marseille judicial court to a financial penalty.”
“The company, which has already taken numerous steps in this direction, has committed to obtaining a new flag as soon as possible,” they said in a joint statement, without adding where the owner was based.
A ship called Grinch is under UK sanctions, while another named Carl with the same registration number is sanctioned by the United States and European Union.
The boarding last month was the second of its kind in recent months.
France in September detained a Russian-linked ship called the Boracay, a vessel claiming to be flagged in Benin, a move Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned as “piracy.”
The Boracay’s Chinese captain is to stand trial in France next week.
The European Union lists 598 vessels suspected of being part of the “shadow fleet” that are banned from European ports and maritime services.
