Caribbean | “Shipwrecked sailors” were killed by US strike, says Democratic elected official

(Washington) An American Democratic elected official said Thursday that a video broadcast by the Pentagon to members of Congress showed an American strike killing “shipwrecked sailors” who had survived an initial strike on their boat, implicated according to Washington in drug trafficking.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in all my time serving the public,” Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters after a closed-door meeting at the Capitol with Admiral Frank Bradley.

The senior officer, in charge of special operations of the American armed forces, had given the order according to the White House to carry out this strike in September in the Caribbean Sea. An operation whose legality has been called into question since the revelations of Washington Postalmost a week ago, according to which two survivors of a first strike had been killed after the order to carry out a second salvo.

According to Democrat Jim Himes, the video shows “two individuals clearly in distress, without means of transportation, who were killed by the United States.”

“Any American who watches this video (…) will see the United States armed forces attacking shipwrecked sailors,” he assured, specifying that the admiral had provided “contextual elements” on his decision.

“Yes they were transporting drugs,” but “they were not in a position to continue their mission in any way,” added Jim Himes.

Republican Tom Cotton, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for his part defended a “fair decision” after one of the closed-door meetings.

The senator, like Democrat Jim Himes, also said that the admiral had denied having received orders from the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to eliminate all the sailors on board the boat, contrary to information from the Washington Post.

“Admiral Bradley was very clear that he was not given such an order: ‘give no quarter’ or ‘kill them all,'” Tom Cotton told reporters.

A total of 11 people died in early September after this American strike in international waters against a boat suspected of transporting narcotics.

The first of around twenty attacks which left 83 dead in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific, amid escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela.