It looked like just another harmless plane in the Caribbean sky — white paint, clean lines, no visible weapons until and unless it attacked.
The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to resemble a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, the officials said.
The nonmilitary appearance was significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration argued its lethal boat attacks were lawful, not murders, because President Donald Trump "determined" the United States was in an armed conflict with drug cartels, New York Times reported.
Did Trump administration committed war crime?The laws of armed conflict prohibited combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them, a war crime called "perfidy."
Retired Maj Gen Steven J Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general for the United States Air Force, said that if the aircraft was painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it, tricking them into failing to realise they should take evasive action or surrender to survive, that was a war crime under armed-conflict standards.
"Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy," he said. "If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity."
The aircraft swooped in low enough for the people aboard the boat to see it, according to officials who saw or were briefed on surveillance video from the attack. The boat turned back towards Venezuela, apparently after seeing the plane, before the first strike.
Two survivors of the initial attack later appeared to wave at the aircraft after clambering aboard an overturned piece of the hull, before the military killed them in a follow-up strike that also sank the wreckage. It was not clear whether the initial survivors knew that the explosion on their vessel was caused by a missile attack.
The military later switched to using recognisably military aircraft for boat strikes, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, although it was not clear whether those aircraft got low enough to be seen. In a boat attack in October, two survivors of an initial strike swam away from the wreckage and avoided being killed by a follow-up strike on the remnants of their vessel. The military rescued them and returned them to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador.
US military manuals about the law of war discussed perfidy at length, saying it included when a combatant feigned civilian status so the adversary "neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary."
A US Navy handbook said lawful combatants at sea used offensive force "within the bounds of military honor, particularly without resort to perfidy," and stressed that commanders had a "duty" to "distinguish their own forces from the civilian population."
The Pentagon said in a statement that its arsenal underwent legal review for compliance with the laws of armed conflict.
"The U.S. military utilizes a wide array of standard and nonstandard aircraft depending on mission requirements," Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, said in response to questions from The New York Times. "Prior to the fielding and employment of each aircraft, they go through a rigorous procurement process to ensure compliance with domestic law, department policies and regulations, and applicable international standards, including the law of armed conflict."
It was not clear what the aircraft was. While multiple officials confirmed that it was not painted in a classic military style, they declined to specify exactly what it looked like.
Amateur plane-spotting enthusiasts posted pictures on Reddit in early September of what appeared to be one of the military's modified 737s, painted white with a blue stripe and with no military markings, at the St. Croix airport in the US Virgin Islands.
The administration argued that the strikes were lawful and the people on the boats were "combatants" because Trump decided the situation was a so-called noninternational armed conflict, meaning a war against a nonstate actor, between the United States and a secret list of 24 criminal gangs and drug cartels he deemed terrorists.
Start a Conversation
Post comment