Heavily abridged. URL for full article in title.

[Opinion. The jig’s up after more than 200 people murdered in int’l waters by the US military. Quite conveniently suspicious that the USCG was closeby. Delivered the fisherman to a third country.Not one gram of coke, no weapons. Nada.  No rule of law for the USA! These men are the only survivors of this terrorist campaign.]

US claims it is not responsible for strikes on Ecuadorian fishing boats – so who is?

Three vessels have been attacked in the eastern Pacific in recent months and the crews believe the US was to blame

Joseph Gedeon and Cate Brown

The Guardian: 13 Jun 2026

Captain Hernán Flores was fishing with his crew about 170 miles off the coast of Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands on 17 March when an explosion cut through the air and an unmanned drone crashed into the cabin of his boat, exploding into flames. Flores’s nephew was hit. The attack split his face and cracked his foot, exposing the bone.

13 men killed by US military boat strikes identified: ‘These were flesh-and-blood people’

“As we approached with the wounded man, we saw several Americans pointing guns at us,” Flores said. “They were yelling ‘hands up’ in Spanish, using translators. I was the first to go up; they handcuffed me behind my back, put a hood over my head, and took me to the top of the boat. They sat us down one by one on the deck.

Flores said his crew were transferred on to a large Salvadorian coastguard vessel, where they were placed in temporary detention.

The fishermen said they were never charged with any wrongdoing and were issued emergency travel permits to return to Ecuador by the end of the month.

So far, the Pentagon and the US Coast Guard have both publicly denied participating in operations involving Ecuadorian fishing vessels.

“There are strange aspects to the official ‘rescue’ story in the Negra Francisca’s case,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said, which was “disputed by the crew, who publicly claim they were captured and taken to El Salvador – that none of the three governments has clarified.

“These incidents have resulted in eight persons still missing or unaccounted for, credible survivor accounts of arbitrary or unlawful detention, abuse, and extrajudicial use of force by US personnel.

The Fiorella, an Ecuadorian fishing vessel, disappeared on 20 January after its captain sent a final satellite message describing what [he] said was a US aircraft, a UAV, and a blue patrol ship that had been following the vessel for three days. Eight crew members have not been seen since.

The Negra Francisca Duarte II, captained by Flores, reported being struck by a drone on 17 March near the Galápagos, and its crew reported being hooded, handcuffed and held on a blue patrol vessel bearing the word “Spear” on its hull before being transferred into Salvadorian custody. Trump’s counternarcotics program spanning the Americas is nicknamed Operation Southern Spear.

Fishermen onboard a third Ecuadorian ship, the Don Maca, also described being stopped and arrested by an American patrol boat after catching swordfish, albacore and dogfish along one of their regular fishing routes. “As we boarded, they handcuffed and hooded us all,” crew member John Sebastián Palacios said in testimony to CDH. “After we were hooded, they fired two more shots at the boat. After half an hour, they sank it. We were so scared we didn’t even dare reach for our phones to record, thinking that if we made a wrong move they would shoot us again.”

The US has long denied involvement. The Senate foreign relations committee is asking whether detained crews were ever searched for contraband, whether they were given access to lawyers or consular officials, and whether survivors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

They also demand “all videos, photographs, and audio recordings taken by US personnel or US aircraft, UAVs, or other modes of surveillance” during those three incidents.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by unblocktheplanet
add

A super freak pathological imbecile like hlHegseth would do something like that. It is likely that he's always been very insecure about his masculinity, and something like this gives him a false sense of power.

Always tickles me how thr left have no idea what a woman is, yet can distinguish a fishing boat from a drug smuggler from 4,000 miles away. Nice 1 fellas 😅

US does it , Iran does it , China does it , Russia does it,Pakistan does it ,, so it must be ok