The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said on Sunday (30) that Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, denied that he had given the instruction to “kill everyone” in the attack on a vessel allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea in September, but the president stated that the matter will be investigated.
On Friday (28), The Washington Post reported that, in the first attack on a vessel in the American military operation against drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, on September 2, two occupants survived and were left clinging to the wreckage.
Two people, who, according to the Post, had direct knowledge of the operation, alleged that the commander of the action, to follow Hegseth’s regulations, had then given an order for a second bombing, to kill the survivors. “The order was to kill everyone,” said one of the sources.
According to information from the website Axios, Trump told journalists on Air Force One, the official plane of the American presidency, that the matter will be “investigated”, but stated that Hegseth denied that he had given the order to “kill everyone”. “He said he didn’t say that, and I believe him 100 percent,” Trump said.
The American president stated that, “if there were two people around” (survivors), the second attack should not have occurred, “but Pete said that did not happen (the order to kill everyone)”. “I have a lot of confidence (in him). Pete said he didn’t order the deaths of those two men,” the president pointed out.
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“Our current operations in the Caribbean are legal under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers at all levels of the chain of command,” said the Secretary of War.
The opposition to Trump intends to investigate the case in the US Congress. “If the facts are, as alleged, that there was a second attack specifically to kill the survivors in the water, that is a cold-blooded war crime. It is also murder,” Senator Angus King, an independent who votes with the Democrats and sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN.
“The real question is: who gave which orders? When were they given? And that’s what we’re going to find out in Congress,” he said.
The American military operation in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean has already resulted in 21 attacks on 22 vessels (with 83 deaths) allegedly linked to drug trafficking.