Archiv: Kriegsverbrechen / Staatsverbrechen / war crimes / state crimes


17.12.2025 - 04:35 [ ABC News ]

Hegseth says Pentagon won’t release video of strike on drug boat survivors to public

At issue is whether the Sept. 2 military strike on the alleged drug boat amounted to a war crime, as some lawmakers have suggested. Officials have confirmed there were four military strikes against the boat — the first strike killing nine of the 11 people aboard. Some 40 minutes later, a second strike was ordered to kill the remaining two survivors. Two more strikes were ordered to sink the boat, officials say.

Trump initially said he would release the video, telling reporters on Dec. 3 “whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.” Trump later backtracked, saying he would defer to Hegseth.

10.12.2025 - 07:33 [ ABC News ]

Admiral ousted by Hegseth talks privately to lawmakers

(December 9, 2025)

Adm. Alvin Holsey, who was pushed out of his post as the top U.S. military commander overseeing operations in Latin America, spoke privately with several lawmakers on Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the meeting — an indication that Congress is quietly pursuing a bipartisan inquiry into the Sept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbean Sea.
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Also on Tuesday, House and Senate leaders known as the „Gang of Eight“ are hearing separately from President Donald Trump‘s national security team: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

10.12.2025 - 07:19 [ KomoNews.com ]

Hegseth won‘t commit to letting Congress see video of deadly boat strike, Schumer says

WASHINGTON (TND) — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would not commit to showing all members of Congress the full video of a deadly double strike on an alleged drug boat on September 2.

He shared the news after he attended a closed-door meeting with Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as fellow top lawmakers known as the „Gang of Eight“ on Tuesday afternoon.

10.12.2025 - 07:16 [ CBS News ]

Sen. Warner says „Gang of Eight“ wasn‘t shown Sept. 2 boat strikes video in Hegseth-Rubio briefing

(8 hours ago)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday about the Sept. 2 strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. CBS News congressional correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns has the details.

07.12.2025 - 21:19 [ Amnesty International ]

Shipwrecked or Not, All These Bombings are Murder

(December 5, 2025)

“Intercepting purported drug boats is a law enforcement operation, subject to policing standards derived from international human rights law, which holds that all people have the rights to life and a fair trial and only allows states to use lethal force when an imminent threat to life exists and less extreme means, like capture, are insufficient.

“A state intentionally killing someone outside those circumstances is committing an extrajudicial execution, a form of murder, no matter what crime the person is alleged to have committed.”

07.12.2025 - 21:18 [ Common Dreams ]

‘All of Them Constitute Murder,’ Amnesty Says of Trump Boat Bombings

Human rights organization Amnesty International is cautioning critics of the Trump administration’s boat-bombing spree against getting bogged down in the precise details of each individual strike if it means losing sight of the bigger picture.

Daphne Eviatar, director for security and human rights for Amnesty International USA, said on Friday that it would be a mistake to merely condemn the Trump administration for launching a double-tap strike aimed at killing shipwrecked survivors of an initial attack, because the entire campaign of bombing vessels based on the suspicion that they are carrying illegal narcotics is unlawful.

05.12.2025 - 03:34 [ CNN ]

Exclusive: Survivors clinging to capsized boat didn’t radio for backup, admiral overseeing double-tap strike tells lawmakers

For a little under an hour — 41 minutes, according to a separate US official — Bradley and the rest of the US military command center discussed what to do as they watched the men struggle to overturn what was left of their boat, the sources said.

Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.

The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale “f**king insane.”

05.12.2025 - 03:26 [ CBS News ]

Lawmakers see video of second strike on boat survivors, say admiral testified there was no kill order

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with reporters after the briefings. They both said Bradley told them that he had not been ordered to leave no survivors. The initial Post report quoted an anonymous source as saying that, before the first strike, Hegseth verbally ordered that everyone on the boat be taken out. „The order was to kill everybody,“ the Post‘s story quoted the source as saying. Hegseth has denied the Post‘s account.

04.12.2025 - 10:25 [ Associated Press ]

Pete Hegseth faces deepening scrutiny from Congress over boat strikes

Trump, a Republican, has largely stood by his defense secretary, among the most important Cabinet-level positions. But the decisions by Wicker, alongside House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers of Alabama and the top Democrats on the committees, to open investigations provide a rare moment of Congress asserting itself and its authority to conduct oversight of the Trump administration.

03.12.2025 - 18:34 [ Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Senator for Michigan ]

Slotkin Statement on Washington Post Report on Hegseth’s Cartel Strike Orders

(December 2, 2025)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) released the following statement regarding reports from the Washington Post that on September 2, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an order to kill all eleven people on the suspected drug boat in the Caribbean:

“At the Pentagon, the buck stops with the Secretary of Defense. Period.

“True leaders own the calls they make and take responsibility for their actions. Secretary Hegseth should release the full video of the strike and lay out publicly what happened, without throwing the uniformed military under the bus.

“Since Signalgate back in the spring, Secretary Hegseth’s leadership has been a distraction from the critical missions of our military, and I called for him to resign then. The President himself yesterday told the country that he would not have wanted a second strike.

“If this reporting is true, President Trump should fire the Secretary, as he did other underperforming cabinet members in his first Administration.”

03.12.2025 - 09:49 [ CNN ]

Trump and Hegseth insist they didn’t know of follow-up strike that killed survivors on suspected drug boat

But Hegseth on Tuesday also denied any direct role in targeting the survivors, saying he’d empowered Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley to make all of the operational decisions — and had left the room well before it became clear that some of the people on the boat had survived.

“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said. “I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.”

The defense secretary did not learn about the second strike, he added, until hours later.

02.12.2025 - 20:27 [ Time Magazine ]

What to Know About the Admiral Named by Hegseth as Boat Strike Comes Under Scrutiny

During the Sept. 2 strikes, Bradley was leading the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees elite military teams, handles complex and sensitive military missions, and at times works with the CIA. In October, he assumed command of the JSOC’s parent group, the United States Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s special operations in more than 80 countries.

02.12.2025 - 19:59 [ Brit Hume, Chief Political Analyst, Fox News Channel / X ]

How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.

(…)

02.12.2025 - 19:57 [ Yahoo ]

Hegseth Throws Admiral Under the Bus, Says Navy Leader Ordered Boat Survivors Killed

Fox News Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume quote-tweeted Hegseth and wrote, “How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.”

Earlier in the day, Hume said on Fox News that the story could be “a big problem” for the Trump administration.

Over on CNN, Ryan Goodman, former general counsel for the Department of Defense, stated that if Hegseth ordered everyone on the boat killed, the secretary is ultimately responsible for the second strike, regardless of Bradley’s involvement.

02.12.2025 - 19:50 [ Politico.com ]

White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike

Hegseth “authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said. “The president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists again are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them. That is what this administration is doing.”

02.12.2025 - 19:16 [ Time Magazine ]

Boat Strike Revelations Draw Bipartisan Outrage, Spurring Push for Hearings as Soon as ‘Next Week’

Lawmakers from both parties were raising the term “war crime” on Monday, as pressure mounts on the Trump Administration to release military video evidence and explain the legal basis for its escalating campaign in the Caribbean.

In the Senate, the calls for oversight were coalescing around Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and has already directed an inquiry to the Pentagon and pledged “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.” Several Senate Democrats told TIME on Monday that they have confidence in Wicker leading the investigation into the strike, but urged him to move quickly.

01.12.2025 - 07:10 [ New York Times ]

Lawmakers Suggest Follow-Up Boat Strike Could Be a War Crime

“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to.”

25.11.2025 - 17:14 [ Interfax.com.ua ]

Russian attack kills 6 in Kyiv – Mayor Klitschko

Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko confirmed the information about six victims in the capital.

„According to confirmed information from doctors, six people died as a result of the Russian attack on Kyiv,“ he said on Telegram.

20.11.2025 - 20:35 [ Interfax.com.ua ]

Zelenskyy after meeting with US Army Secretary: Ukraine, USA to work on points of plan to end war

Zelenskyy also separately informed about Russia‘s terrible strike on Ternopil.

„The X-101 missile, with which the Russian army hit an ordinary high-rise building yesterday, was manufactured in 2025. It contains 175 foreign components that still enter Russia bypassing sanctions. We are counting on the help of the United States in limiting all schemes,“ the president said.

He handed over to Secretary Driscoll specific materials with information about the companies that produce critical components, the countries of origin, and the parts themselves.

20.11.2025 - 20:17 [ Kyiv Post ]

26 Killed in Western Ukraine’s Ternopil After Deadly Missile Strike on Residential Building

(November 19, 2025)

In the western city of Ternopil, 25 people had been confirmed dead as of 3.09 p.m. and 73 others injured, following a Tuesday to Wednesday overnight Russian attack Ukraine’s emergency services reported.

“Russia has again struck peaceful Ukrainian cities – deliberately targeting housing, education facilities, and critical infrastructure. Their goal remains unchanged: more civilian casualties, more destruction, more pain,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote via Telegram.

20.11.2025 - 17:20 [ Nicolas J.S. Davies / Mintpress.com ]

Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen: Calculating the Millions-High Death Toll of America’s Post-9/11 Wars

(26.4.2018)

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.” But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

20.11.2025 - 17:15 [ Middle East Eye ]

Dick Cheney may be gone, but the wars he waged are forever

(November 8, 2025)

As Bush‘s vice president, Cheney became a key architect of the US „war on terror“, which included the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 war on Iraq, and sweeping intelligence, surveillance and torture programmes.

Most notoriously, Cheney helped the Bush administration construct an elaborate double lie as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.

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Cheney‘s true legacy, then, lies not only in the „war on terror“ he helped engineer, but in the political and moral infrastructure he left behind.

More than two decades later, his post-9/11 world order – defined by endless wars, government overreach and impunity – endures, and today‘s war criminals, following in his path, roam free.

01.11.2025 - 00:34 [ United Nations ]

‘Blood on the sand. Blood on the hands’: UN decries world’s failure as Sudan’s El Fasher falls

“What is unfolding in El Fasher recalls the horrors Darfur was subjected to twenty years ago,” Mr. Fletcher said, referring to the atrocities of the early 2000s that shocked the world and eventually led to International Criminal Court indictments.

“But somehow today we are seeing a very different global reaction – one of resignation,” he continued. “This is also a crisis of apathy.”

“The Sudan crisis is, at its core, a failure of protection, and our responsibility to uphold international law,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Atrocities are committed with unashamed expectation of impunity…the world has failed an entire generation.”

01.11.2025 - 00:24 [ United States Mission to the United Nations ]

Remarks at a UN Security Council Briefing on Sudan and South Sudan

(October 30, 2025)

The United States condemns in the strongest terms the horrific violence occurring in El Fasher. The situation is both tragic and appalling.

We have said this before, and we will say it again – the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias have committed genocide.

The RSF has and continues to systematically kill men and boys – even infants – and deliberately target women and children for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. These crimes are ethnically motivated.

RSF militias are targeting civilians as they flee, killing innocent people escaping conflict, and preventing those who remain from accessing life-saving supplies.

The United States condemns these abhorrent atrocities in no uncertain terms. Those responsible should be held accountable, including through sanctions, as noted by the Sudan Sanctions Panel of Experts in its most recent report.

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Colleagues, ending wars is a priority for President Trump, and the United States remains committed to working with our partners and other stakeholders to resolve the crisis.

Together, we are focused on securing an immediate humanitarian truce, halting external support, and advancing a transition to civilian governance.

31.10.2025 - 23:25 [ United Nations ]

Tens of thousands fleeing on foot amid atrocities in Sudan’s El Fasher

Since the powerful paramilitary group made a major incursion into the city last week, the UN human rights office has received “horrendous accounts of summary executions, mass killings, rapes, attacks against humanitarian workers, looting, abductions and forced displacement,” said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the UN human rights office (OHCHR).

Speaking from Nairobi to journalists in Geneva, Mr. Magango said numerous testimonies had been received from residents who had fled in terror as the city fell, then “survived the threatening journey to Tawila, approximately 70 kilometres away” – a journey that takes three to four days on foot.

31.10.2025 - 23:02 [ Al Jazeera ]

War in Sudan: Humanitarian, fighting, control developments, October 2025

Sudan’s civil war between the regular army known as the Sudan Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues unabated.

The conflict is well into its third year and has seen both sides allegedly commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. In addition, the RSF is implicated in atrocities that may amount to genocide, especially in the sprawling western region of Darfur.

31.10.2025 - 22:54 [ Middle East Eye ]

RSF fighters film themselves massacring Sudanese fleeing el-Fasher

(October 28, 2025)

Middle East Eye has reviewed dozens of video clips and images allegedly taken in el-Fasher since the RSF assault began.

Some were published by the RSF itself; others emerged on social media, particularly Sudanese Telegram groups.

The footage depicts chaotic and bloody scenes, captured by triumphant RSF fighters. Investigations suggest the videos are new.

The Arabic dialect spoken is Sudanese – particularly Darfuri – and the fighters’ dress is consistent with members of the RSF.

31.10.2025 - 22:50 [ Humanitarian Research Lab / X ]

HUMAN SECURITY EMERGENCY El-Fasher has fallen to RSF. HRL finds evidence of mass killings including door-to-door clearance operations and objects consistent with reported bodies on berm entrapping El-Fasher.#KeepEyesOnSudan

(October 28, 2025)

29.10.2025 - 22:50 [ United Nations ]

Reported massacre at hospital in Sudan’s El Fasher leaves 460 dead

Horrific stories of mass-atrocities committed by the RSF militia continue to emerge, along with the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled the North Darfur city of El Fasher in Sudan.

28.10.2025 - 00:17 [ United Nations ]

Risk of large-scale atrocities in Sudan’s El Fasher grows ‘by the day’

The agency has received reports of summary executions of civilians trying to escape what was the last Sudanese military government stronghold of El Fasher – with indications of ethnic motivations for killings – and of former combatants who have put down their weapons, which is prohibited under humanitarian law.

“The risk of further large-scale, ethnically motivated violations and atrocities in El Fasher is mounting by the day,” warned UN human rights chief Volker Türk.

“Urgent and concrete action needs to be taken to ensure the protection of civilians in El Fasher and safe passage for those trying to reach relative safety.”