Demands to Release Full Video of Deadly US Boat Strike Grow After Congressional Briefing

The Trump administration has tried to justify the strikes to Congress by claiming that the US is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which some legal scholars and lawmakers have disputed.

Cardozo Law School professor of international law Rebecca Ingbe told Time in a Thursday interview that “there is no actual armed conflict here, so this is murder.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Thursday that “clearly, in my view, very likely a war crime was committed here.”

“We don’t use our military to help intervene when it comes to drug running, and what the Trump administration has done is manufactured cause for conflict with respect to going after drug boats and engaging in extrajudicial killing when the real aim is clearly regime change in Venezuela,” he added, alluding to President Donald Trump’s massive military deployment and threats to invade the oil-rich South American nation.

At least 83 people have been killed in 21 disclosed strikes on boats the Trump administration claims – without releasing evidence – were transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. South American leaders and relatives of survivors say that at least some of the victims of the US bombings were fishermen with no ties to narco-trafficking.

Reed said that Thursday’s briefing “confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities, and demonstrates exactly why the Senate Armed Services Committee has repeatedly requested – and been denied – fundamental information, documents, and facts about this operation.”

“This must, and will be, only the beginning of our investigation into this incident,” he vowed.

After the briefing, US Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) – the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – called the footage “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”

“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see its military attacking shipwrecked sailors,” he added.

Thursday’s calls followed similar demands from skeptical Democrats, some of whom accused the Trump administration of withholding evidence.

“Pete Hegseth should release the full tapes of the September 2 attack,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the upper chamber floor on Tuesday. “Both the first and second strike. Not a clip. Not some edited or redacted snippet. The full unedited tapes of each strike must be released so the American people can see what happened with their own eyes.”

“Pete Hegseth said he did nothing wrong,” he added. “So prove it.”