President Trump speaks to reporters after arriving on Air Power One, Friday, at Palm Seaside Worldwide Airport in West Palm Seaside, Fla.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
WASHINGTON — The 2 survivors of an American navy strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel within the Caribbean will likely be despatched to Ecuador and Colombia, their house nations, President Donald Trump stated Saturday.
The navy rescued the pair after placing a submersible vessel Thursday, in what was at the least the sixth such assault since early September.
“It was my nice honor to destroy a really giant DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating in direction of the US on a well-known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump stated in a social media submit. “U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with principally Fentanyl, and different unlawful narcotics.”
The Republican president stated two folks onboard had been killed — yet one more than was beforehand reported — and the 2 who survived are being despatched to their house nations “for detention and prosecution.”
The repatriation avoids questions for the Trump administration about what the authorized standing of the 2 would have been within the U.S. justice system.
With Trump’s affirmation on his Fact Social platform of the dying toll, meaning U.S. navy motion in opposition to vessels within the area have killed at the least 29 folks.
The president has justified the strikes by asserting that the US is engaged in an “armed battle” with drug cartels. He’s counting on the identical authorized authority utilized by the George W. Bush administration when it declared a conflict on terrorism after the Sept. 11 assaults and is treating the suspected traffickers as in the event that they had been enemy troopers in a standard conflict.
