Gambiaj.com – (WASHINGTON, DC) – International war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody has sharply condemned the United States’ recent deadly airstrikes on boats off the Venezuelan coast, describing the operation as unlawful and potentially prosecutable as extrajudicial killings.
Speaking in an interview with BBC News, Brody, a member of the International Commission of Jurists, said the US had “no legal authority” to attack suspected drug-trafficking vessels with lethal force, warning that the actions ordered by President Donald Trump and carried out by US forces violate fundamental principles of international law.
“These boat strikes are not lawful,” Brody said. “The crime that has been committed here is premeditated murder on the high seas. In international law, that’s called an extrajudicial execution.”
Brody stressed that even if the US characterizes its campaign as part of a “war on drugs,” the law does not permit turning rhetorical metaphors into armed conflict.
“President Trump has taken a metaphor, the war on drugs, and tried to convert it into an actual war,” he said. “It’s not a war any more than a war on cancer would allow you to bomb a cigarette factory, or a war on disinformation would allow Trump to bomb the BBC.”
According to Brody, killing civilians at sea without evidence, trial, or any demonstration of imminent threat violates both US and international law. While interdiction, arrest, and prosecution of drug smugglers are lawful, he said, summary executions are not.
“We can arrest people, bring them to the US, and if they’re convicted by a jury, they’d be sentenced to jail,” he explained. “What we do not have any legal authority to do is execute people from the skies… We can’t do that on the high seas any more than we could do it in New York.”
Possible Criminal Liability for US Officials
Brody drew parallels with the case of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, currently facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for extrajudicial killings linked to his anti-drug campaign.
“This is exactly the same thing that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have done here, murdering suspected drug dealers without trial,” Brody said.
While the US is not a party to the ICC, he noted that jurisdiction could apply if strikes occurred within the territorial waters of states that are members, such as Colombia or Venezuela.
“The prosecutor would be well within his rights to bring charges against US officials,” Brody argued.
Not About Drugs, Brody Says
Brody also dismissed the US government’s stated justification that the operation was essential to combating fentanyl trafficking.
“Venezuela accounts for a very small fraction of the flow of drugs reaching the US,” he said, noting that fentanyl overwhelmingly enters overland from Mexico.
He also pointed to what he described as political motives, citing Trump’s recent pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in the US for facilitating massive cocaine shipments.
“Hernandez ran a network that brought in 500 tons of cocaine and even bragged he would send coke up the noses of gringos,” Brody said. “This whole situation is about bullying and threatening the regime of Nicolás Maduro, not about drugs.”
Reed Brody concluded by insisting that lawful interdiction and prosecution, not targeted killings, are the legitimate tools for combating narcotics trafficking.
