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'Simply murders': Relatives of men killed in boat strikes sue U.S.

The mother of Chad Joseph and sister of Rishi Samaroo, slain in the strikes, say the attacks "lack any plausible legal justification."

Adam Klasfeld Jan 28

Images of a boat strike and its victims from the lawsuit

The family members of two Trinidadian men killed in one of the 36 U.S. strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean sued the federal government in Massachusetts.

“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification,” the 23-page complaint states. ‘Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command.”

On Oct. 14, a U.S. strike launched a missile on a boat carrying six people, including Trinidadians Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo. All six passengers died, and an estimated 135 people have died in three dozen attacks like it.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, Joseph’s mother and Samaroo’s sister filed a lawsuit for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing.

“Chad was a loving and caring son who was always there for me, for his wife and children, and for our whole family. I miss him terribly. We all do,” Joseph’s mother Lenore Burnley, the lead plaintiff, wrote in a statement released by the ACLU of Massachusetts. “We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure.”

Both families base their claims on two federal statutes: the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statutes.

“Rishi used to call our family almost every day, and then one day he disappeared, and we never heard from him again,” Samaroo’s sister Sallycar Korasingh said.

The ACLU said that Samaroo was released early on parole from a 15-year sentence two years ago for his participation in a homicide unrelated to the boat strike.

“Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family,” said Korasingh, who is a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit. “If the U.S. government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable.”

Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to justify the strikes, without evidence, on fighting cartel-linked drug trafficking.

The Trinidadian government and the men’s relatives reject those claims.

“Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not members of, or affiliated with, drug cartels,” the complaint states. “The Trinidadian government has publicly stated that ‘the government has no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to illegal activities,’ and that it had ‘no information of the victims of U.S. strikes being in possession of illegal drugs, guns, or small arms.’”

Trump’s government has refused to disclose a still-secret Office of Legal Counsel memorandum purporting to justify the strikes.

“Whatever that secret memorandum states, it cannot render the patently illegal killings lawful,” the lawsuit says.

“First, because there is, in fact, no non-international armed conflict with the drug cartels purportedly targeted in the strikes (and no evidence that the boats targeted are associated with cartels), the killings violate the bedrock prohibition against extrajudicial killing and are simply murders on the high seas,” the complaint states. “And second, even if there were a non-international armed conflict between the United States and drug cartels (and even if there were evidence that the boats targeted were associated with the cartels), the strikes would constitute war crimes under the laws of war and federal law.”

Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, called the government’s justification “absurd and dangerous.”

“These are lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless,” Azmy said in a statement. “This is a critical step in ensuring accountability, while the individuals responsible may ultimately be answerable criminally for murder and war crimes.”

Read the complaint in full here.