The UK has temporarily suspended intelligence sharing with the US on ships in the Caribbean suspected of drug trafficking because it does not want to participate in US military strikes, which the country believes are illegal.
This is reported by CNN, citing sources.
Britain, which controls several territories in the Caribbean and has intelligence assets there, has previously helped the US track vessels suspected of carrying drugs so that the US Coast Guard can intercept them. This involves stopping the ships, searching them, detaining the crew and seizing the drugs.
Intelligence was usually passed on to the Joint Interagency Task Force South, an interagency unit in Florida that includes representatives from several partner countries and is engaged in combating illegal drug trafficking.
However, after the US began carrying out lethal strikes on the ships in September, Britain expressed concerns that British intelligence data could be used to select targets.
According to CNN sources, these strikes have already killed 76 people and violate international law. The data blackout began more than a month ago.
The Trump administration has claimed that the US military can legally kill suspected smugglers because they are “military adversaries” and “dangerous to Americans”.
The US Department of Justice has also issued a secret legal opinion in favor of this approach, and a number of drug cartels have been designated “foreign terrorist organizations”.
However, international law lawyers note that international humanitarian law also applies to civilian smugglers, and that designating a group as a terrorist group does not automatically grant the right to use lethal force. Some of the vessels attacked did not move or turned around, casting doubt on the claim of an “imminent threat”.
Senior US military officials have also expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the operations. The commander of the US Southern Command Admiral Alvin Halsey even offered to resign over legal concerns about the strikes.
Canada has also distanced itself from the military strikes. A Canadian Defense Ministry official stressed that Canadian forcesʼ operations within Operation Caribbean are conducted separately from US strikes and do not support their lethal component.
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