‘Inevitably difficult’: Inside a family’s fight against the US boat strikes

Bogota, Colombia – On September 14, Alejandro Carranza, a 42-year-old fisherman, set out to sea from a remote town in La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost province, bordering Venezuela.

It was an ordinary fishing trip, in search of tuna and marlin, said Leonardo Vega, a childhood friend and the president of the fishing association Carranza belonged to. But this time, Carranza never returned.

The day after his departure, the United States government announced it had conducted its second military strike against a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean Sea.

As weeks went by with no word of his whereabouts, Carranza’s family and friends began to fear the worst.

“When I heard Alejandro hadn’t come back, my first thought was that he might have been caught in the bombing,” Vega told Al Jazeera over the phone.

Since September, the US has carried out dozens of strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific regions, killing at least 115 and injuring two.

US President Donald Trump has accused the victims of being "narco-terrorists" who ferried illicit drugs into North America, driving a deadly overdose crisis.

But that account is under scrutiny. Carranza's family members deny he was a drug smuggler and instead describe him as a lifelong fisherman, a father of four and a fixture in the fishing community of Santa Marta, the coastal city where he lived.

They are now seeking answers through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHCR), a regional body that investigates rights violations.

Their petition, filed on December 2, marks the first major international legal challenge against Trump officials for the boat strike campaign.

“They violated the right to life of Alejandro by summarily killing him, without trial and without warrant,” Dan Kovalik, a US lawyer representing the family, told Al Jazeera.

But even as criticism of the military operation builds, experts say that holding the US to account will be an uphill legal and political battle.

“It’s going to be inevitably difficult,” said Juan Pappier, deputy director of the Americas at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

Parsing the evidence

The last time Carranza's family heard from the fisherman, he had hopped a bus from Santa Marta to La Guajira, where word had spread of a large — and lucrative — school of fish along the coast.

According to local media reports, Carranza telephoned his eldest daughter Zaira before setting sail.

He warned her that he might be without communication for a while. It is not unusual for fishermen to spend days on the waves, chasing billfish and other big game.

"Zaira, I'm going fishing now. I'm going to be out of contact," his daughter remembers him saying, according to reporting from RTVC Noticias. Neither his family nor his friends heard from him again.

The US has not released the identities of those killed in the strikes, nor confirmed or denied claims made by relatives who claim their loved ones were killed.

But Carranza's family believes he died in the September 15 attack, citing his sudden disappearance and the reported location of the bombing, off Colombia's coast.

Another clue, Vega said, is the boat shown in the released footage.

Trump posted on social media a video from the attack, showing the blurry outline of men on board a boat moments before an explosion engulfs the vessel. The US president claimed in his post that "3 male terrorists" were "killed in action".

But Vega noted that the boat in the video has a flat bow, a distinguishing feature of Colombian fishing vessels.

Still, challenges remain in identifying the victims of the September 15 attack. There are no reports of wreckage or remains washing ashore, suggesting that the destroyed boat and its crew may have sunk in international waters.

Without definitive proof of who was on board, experts say the Trump administration could seek to dismiss the family’s petition by arguing that Carranza was not a victim of US strikes.

But even without a body, Carranza's family could still argue that he was on the boat, said Andreas Schuller, co-director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

He said they would need to substantiate their claim with evidence, such as testimony from witnesses who saw Carranza board his vessel or heard him say he was doing so. Another option could be cellphone location data obtained from a service provider.

New information could also emerge after Colombia concludes its investigation into the bombings, said Diana Guzman, the director of Dejusticia, a Colombian human rights research group.

“The lack of a body and proof affects these cases, but when it comes to human rights violations, there is often a lack of evidence,” she said. “The important thing is to investigate.”

'Not the life of a drug trafficker'

Carranza’s disappearance stunned those who knew him.

Vega described him as easy-going and friendly. After a long day at sea, Carranza had a habit of socialising with fellow fishermen over beer and plates of fried tripe. Friends nicknamed him “coroncoro", after a tiny catfish.

But the Carranza family's human rights petition has also shone a light on the fisherman's past brush with the law.

Local news outlets have reported that Carranza was accused in 2016 of stealing weapons from a Santa Marta police station.

He was never found guilty, and the investigation was eventually closed, said Norma Vera, a human rights activist who has followed the case.

Vera said that some media outlets have tried to portray Carranza as a criminal by associating him with a drug-trafficking group that was held responsible for the robbery.

But their coverage did not provide a full picture of the case, she said.

“If he wasn’t convicted, then logically he isn’t a delinquent,” said Vera, adding that Carranza had a clean criminal record. “In fact, he doesn’t even have a single traffic ticket."

Still, the Trump administration has sought to frame criminal activity in Latin America as a "national security threat" to the US.

Last year, it designated several Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations.

And in October, Trump reportedly sent a confidential memo to the US Congress, justifying the lethal strikes as actions taken against "combatants" in an "armed conflict".

Under international law, an armed conflict between a state and a non-state actor exists only if there is “protracted armed violence” against the state.

But experts like Pappier from Human Rights Watch point out that criminal activity does not amount to hostilities under international law.

The Trump administration's arguments, he said, "don't hold any weight whatsoever. They're a complete misrepresentation of international law".

Numerous legal scholars, including at the United Nations, have instead called the bombings a form of "extrajudicial killing".

Vega, for one, doubts that his friend was ever involved in drug trafficking.

The fisherman, he said, lived in a modest home with dirt floors with his four children and wife. Several times, Vega saw his friend struggle financially, unable to pay for his kids' school meals.

“This is not the life of a drug trafficker,” Vega said. To date, the US has presented no evidence against Carranza.

A call for justice

As part of the petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Carranza family is seeking compensation and a stop to the US strikes.

But the commission’s powers are limited. It can investigate alleged violations, determine state responsibility and provide recommendations, but its decisions are non-binding, meaning that the US is not obligated to comply.

“It can provide a measure of justice, in that it would be a regional human rights body saying that the victims are right and deserve to be compensated,” said Pappier.

"But it would not immediately deliver reparations or full-fledged accountability."

Bringing the case before a US court could ultimately be more productive, Pappier added, but it would also be significantly more challenging.

Kovalik, the family's lawyer, told Al Jazeera he is currently weighing those challenges.

The fact that the alleged crime took place outside of US territory could be a barrier to litigation, he explained. So too could be the legal protections granted to the US government and top officials.

The US government enjoys sovereign immunity in most cases, and the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the president enjoys "presumptive immunity" for any "official acts" he engages in.

“We are still considering a possible court action,” Kovalik said.

Another challenge is that the US has shown no willingness to investigate the strikes or release information that would help others do so.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, the Colombian Attorney General’s Office confirmed that it has opened an inquiry into the US bombings, but experts warn that restricted access to information could limit its investigation.

Colombia would need insight into US decisions about the strikes to determine criminal responsibility, said Schuller, the expert from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

Without US cooperation, however, “it's impossible to get the information necessary to say who could be put on trial for such a strike", he explained.

For now, Kovalik said that the Carranza family takes some comfort in knowing that “at least something is being done”.

Since Carranza’s disappearance, relatives have been unable to hold a funeral without the fisherman's remains. His family also is struggling financially because Carranza was the household’s breadwinner, and his wife has a disability that limits her ability to work.

Vega said that, if Carranza had been suspected of smuggling drugs, US authorities had a responsibility to arrest him, not kill him.

The burden of proof, he added, should be on the US government, not the family.

“Alejandro was one of our fishermen. He will not stop being one unless proven otherwise.”