A.’s family The Colombian was killed in a US military attack He has filed a complaint against the United States on a ship in the Caribbean at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The family of 42-year-old Alejandro Carranza Medina, who was killed on September 15, denied any drugs were on board the vessel targeted by Washington’s military anti-narcotics campaign, insisting he was a fisherman doing his job on the high seas.
“We know that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of ships such as the Alejandro Carranza Medina and the killing of all aboard such ships,” says the complaint seen by AFP on Wednesday.
US strikes have been in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific He killed more than 80 people Washington says, without providing evidence, that drugs were being transported from Venezuela in the boats. Legal experts and members of parliament critical of the strikes have argued that it is a military action against suspected drug-smuggling boats. legally questionable.
Family members and governments of the victims say some of the dead were fishermen, and rights groups say the strikes are illegal, even though the targets were drug traffickers.
The IACHR complaint said Hegseth issued the orders “despite not knowing the identities of the targets of these extrajudicial bombings and killings,” which President Trump said had been “confirmed.”
The IACHR is a quasi-judicial body of the Organization of American States, created to protect human rights in the region.
In the Government Assembly held on Tuesday, said Hegseth The US is “just starting to hit drug boats and put narco-terrorists on the bottom of the ocean.” He stated that there has been a break in the strikes recently, and “it is difficult to find ships to strike now”.
“Deterrence has to matter,” he said. “Don’t arrest and surrender and then do it again, a wash and repeat of previous administrations.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has called the US strikes “extrajudicial executions”, has vowed to support the family in their quest for justice.
“My lawyer Dan Kovalik has started the legal defense of the Carranza family, the victims of the American murder of Alejandro Carranza, a fisherman from Santa Marta who was killed by a missile fired at his boat in the Caribbean and a poor supporter,” Petro. he wrote on social networks on monday
“Good man,” says the widow
In an interview with AFP in October, Karrantza’s widow Katerine HernandezHe said he was a “good man”.
He left four children.
“He had no connection with drug trafficking, and his daily activity was fishing,” said Hernandez.
“Why did they take his life like that?” he asked during the interview. “Fishermen have a right to live. Why didn’t they just arrest them?”
Before the last trip, Carranza told his father that he was going to a place with “good fish”.
MARCO PERDOMO/AFP via Getty Images 
Days passed without contact, until the family learned about the bombing on television.
“The days went by and he didn’t call,” said Hernandez.
Friends interviewed by AFP also insisted that Carranza was a fisherman.
“He went to sea to catch sierra, tuna and snapper, which are found far away at this time of year,” said Cesar Henriquez, who has known him since childhood.
“He always came back to Santa Marta, secured his boat and went home. I never knew him to do anything bad,” Henriquez told AFP.