The United States may have violated the laws of war by disguising a military aircraft as a civilian plane during a September strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean, The New York Times reported late on Monday.
The newspaper said the aircraft used in the Sept. 2 attack was painted to resemble a civilian plane, with missiles concealed inside the fuselage rather than carried visibly under the wings, raising questions about whether the operation amounted to perfidy, a prohibited form of deception under international law.
“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” retired U.S. Air Force Major General Steven Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general, told the Times.
“If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”
There was no immediate comment from the White House.
President Donald Trump said at the time that the strike killed 11 “narcoterrorists.” The operation marked the first known attack in a boat-bombing campaign launched by the Trump administration in the southern Caribbean.
According to the Times, three people familiar with the matter said the aircraft “was painted in the usual military grey and lacked military markings,” though its transponder transmitted a military tail number.
The report said the plane flew low enough for people on the boat to see it.
“Two survivors of the initial attack later appeared to wave” at the aircraft before a second strike killed them, the newspaper reported.
The Times contrasted the incident with a later strike on Oct. 16, when survivors of an initial blast fled the scene and were later rescued.
U.S. military manuals describe perfidy as including situations where a combatant feigns civilian status so an adversary “neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary,” the Times said.
The newspaper added that the U.S. military has since switched to clearly marked military aircraft, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, for subsequent strikes.
Trump administration officials told the Times the operations were lawful and denied that the United States had committed any illegal acts.
Since Sept. 2, at least 35 strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing more than 110 people, according to the report.
