Trump admin to face 'reckoning' at hearing for blowing up drug boats: experts
President Donald Trump's administration is about to meet a "reckoning" for its international boat strikes, according to one expert.
Over the last several months, the Trump administration has conducted multiple bombing campaigns against boats in the Caribbean, operations that have killed at least 154 people. Now, the administration is expected to defend the legality of the boat strikes during a hearing on Friday with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a Guatemala-based international organization that is part of the Organization of American States, which the U.S. helped create in 1948.
The Trump administration has routinely claimed that it is conducting the strikes to fight drug traffickers, but has provided no public evidence to support this claim.
Jamie Rowen, Director of the Center for Justice, Law and Societies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, called the strikes a "flagrant violation of international law" during a new interview with Adam Klasfeld of "All Rise News." She noted that the U.S. is also a party to international treaties that prohibit the taking of life without due process.
Klasfeld called the hearing a "reckoning."
Rowen also noted that the hearing comes with specific limitations. For instance, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights can conduct a fact-finding mission that supports other lawsuits filed against the Trump administration related to the boat strikes.
However, there is no "judicial enforcement" of any findings from the hearing, Rowen added.
"It is purely for knowledge production that can affect the politics," Rowen said.