The New York Times: Venezuelan vessel's change of course calls into question the US's self-defense argument

Published at: 10/09/2025 04:21 PM

An article in the American newspaper The New York Times revealed that the alleged Venezuelan vessel that had been destroyed by the United States Army (US) in the Caribbean last week had changed its course before it was attacked, since the people who were on board noticed that a military plane was stalking them, which calls into question the self-defense alleged by the Donald Administration Trump.

The media cites U.S. officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity and pointed out that the military repeatedly attacked the ship before it sank; in addition, they added new details to an operation that represented a surprising departure from traditional drug interception efforts, intensifying Trump's use of the military for matters normally handled by law enforcement agencies.

According to the publication, legal specialists questioned the legality of the fact that, by order of President Trump, the military attacked and killed drug trafficking suspects as if they were combatants in a war. The Republican magnate announced that the operation took place in international waters and that he had killed 11 people for allegedly trafficking drugs to the United States, through the extinct Tren de Aragua gang, without presenting evidence to support these statements.

The Secretary of State of the North American country, Marco Rubio, said that the suspects represented “an immediate threat”, while Trump, in a letter to Congress, justified the attack as a matter of self-defense.

The New York Times cited legal specialists, including senior retired military jurists, who have rejected the idea that Trump has legitimate authority to treat alleged drug smuggling as legally equivalent to an imminent armed attack against the United States.

Even if that premise were accepted for the sake of argument, they added, if the ship had already turned around, that would further undermine what they considered to be an already weak self-defense claim.

Mazo News Team