The Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild condemns the U.S. military presence off the coast of Venezuela and the bombing and sinking of small vessels in international or foreign waters, as acts of war and military attacks on the civilian population, raising the danger of a full-scale U.S. invasion and assault on Venezuela. At this time there have been 16 bombings resulting in 67 deaths of nationals of an unknown number of foreign countries. The stationing of 10 naval vessels and deployment of 10,000 troops in the region is ominous. The stationing of half of this force in Puerto Rico, including F-35 fighter jets, drones and surveillance planes is a particularly egregious provocation and misuse of Puerto Rican territory.
The order by Donald Trump for the deliberate sinking of foreign civilian vessels in international waters and the deliberate killing of civilians on board, and the justification of these murders by Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Secretary of State Rubio, constitute violations of the United States War Powers Act; Article 2(2) of the United Nations Charter; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials as well as customary international law.
Follow-up attacks on surviving crew or passengers are especially egregious war crimes and violations of international human rights, maritime, and military law.
As several U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights recently stated, “Repeated and systematic lethal attacks by the United States military on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific raise grave concerns about the commission of potential international crimes…. These attacks appear to be unlawful killings carried out by order of a Government, without judicial or legal process…. All members of armed forces must comply with… international law. Officers should refuse superior orders where these are a manifest violation of the law, and may result in a serious violation of human rights, including extrajudicial executions.”
The ordering or waging of war without a declaration of war by Congress and in violation of U.S. treaty obligations constitutes an impeachable offense on the part of the responsible officials.
These developments also come after over 23 years of direct U.S. involvement in coups and coup attempts in Venezuela, routine interference in Venezuelan elections, the imposition of unlawful unilateral coercive measures designed to impoverish the Venezuelan people, the arrest and detention of Venezuelan diplomats, the unlawful confiscation of Venezuelan assets held in foreign banks, and prior attempted landings by US mercenaries. Venezuela holds the greatest recorded oil resources globally, as well as the fourth-largest resources of natural gas, and U.S. corporations have repeatedly tried to interfere with the country’s independent economic development and trade in resources.
The Military Law Task Force is concerned that attacks or alleged attacks on vessels in international waters have been considered by the U.S. and other countries to constitute acts of war, and have often led or been the pretext for larger, longer wars, as with the sinking of the Lusitania and the Tonkin Gulf incident, and must therefore be undertaken only with the utmost case for their legality.
The Military Law Task Force calls upon the United States Congress to hold hearings to investigate these war crimes, to consider articles of impeachment against President Trump, and to enact such additional legislation as may be needed to ensure that such actions will not be repeated.
