The families of two Trinidadian nationals killed by U.S. strikes in the South Caribbean earlier this year have filed an unlawful death lawsuit against the Trump administration in what is being seen as the first of many that will follow in the coming months.
The suit has been filed in a federal court in Massachusetts and accuses the U.S. and its military, by extension of unlawfully killing Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, residents of Las Cuevas in northern Trinidad in October of last year.
Burnley vs the US was filed this week by a group of human rights attorneys with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and makes it clear that it seeks to hold the government accountable and responsible for the deaths of the two men whose families say they were simply on a boat heading home from Venezuela after working there.
“Our complaint makes clear that the US government’s killing of Chad and Rishi was homicide plain and simple. Chad and Rishi were both Trinidadian men traveling back from working on farms in Venezuela. When they were in their boat, their boat was struck by a missile, and they were summarily executed by the US government,” said Jeff Klein, an ACLU attorney.
Four others on the boat were also killed.
The plaintiffs or complainants in this case are Lenore Burnley, the mother of Chad Joseph and Sally Korasingh, Rishi Samaroo’s sister. The suit seeks so far unspecified compensation for their deaths under the death on the high seas act and the alien tort statute, as it dubbed the fatal boat strike an extrajudicial killing. The suit pointedly noted that President Trump had publicly admitted ordering the strikes on vessels in the region. In all, dozens of passengers and crews have been killed during the campaign by the US military armada in the region. The suit says Washington has provided little or no evidence that some of these vessels were fetching drugs or that some of the deceased had in fact, been traffickers.
“The government has not publicly identified all of the drug cartels with which it claims to be at war, and with respect to nearly all its boat strikes, including the one on October 14th, it has not identified any cartel it was purportedly targeting. Nor has the government made public any evidence at all to support its assertions that the boats it has blown up and the people it has killed were members of, or even affiliated with, drug cartels. Nor has the government provided any public evidence that targeted boats were, in fact, carrying drugs or that the occupants were trafficking them, let alone that any such drugs were destined for the US,” the attorneys said in their pleadings.
In their very detailed filing, the attorneys argued that the US would be at pains to provide evidence that drug trafficking was at play when they were attacked.
“Neither Mr. Joseph nor Mr. Samaroo was engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the United States or anyone at all. The United States’ killings of Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were unlawful,” it stated.
