Dossier mode

The US is killing people at sea, at scale, without trial. That the killing is happening is undisputed fact; the legal character and the specific victims are graded exactly as the evidence allows.

The strikes are the scandal. The prosecutor's murder is a warning, not a verdict.

people killed in 60+ publicly known US strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since late 2025, per SOUTHCOM statements and independent tallies. None was charged, tried, or convicted.

USNI News; Just Security timeline

Operation Southern Spear has conducted 60+ strikes and killed 200+ people since late 2025. No one struck was charged, tried, or convicted.

Per SOUTHCOM statements and independent tallies (USNI News, Just Security's running timeline). That the killing is happening, and its scale, is not in dispute.

Legal and human-rights authorities call the strikes extrajudicial executions. The administration disputes it, asserting wartime authority against 'narco-terrorists.'

WOLA titled its analysis 'Killing Spree: Extrajudicial executions in the U.S. boat strikes campaign'; Amnesty International demanded investigation; legal scholars question the claimed 'armed conflict' basis for lethal force outside any battlefield. Graded PROBABLY_TRUE for the characterization, with the government's contrary legal claim stated.

Survivors of the three Ecuadorian-boat strikes said they were fishermen, not traffickers — and described abduction, torture, and injuries consistent with explosions.

Survivors described being abducted, blindfolded, starved, and abandoned by men in US military uniforms; medical examiners found injuries consistent with explosions. The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances took up the case. No trafficking evidence has been produced for these specific vessels. Graded PROBABLY_TRUE on survivor testimony, medical findings, and UN engagement — while noting these are contested accounts the US has not answered.

The three Ecuadorian strikes may be a separate, covert CIA program — distinct from the Pentagon's public Operation Southern Spear.

The Washington Post (Aug 13, 2026) reported the three Galapagos-area strikes were carried out under a covert CIA program, resting on documented flight forensics: a surveillance plane launching from El Salvador's Ilopango before each attack, a crew arrived from Tennessee, a US registration not listed with the FAA, a shell-company owner at a Virginia UPS store. The flight facts are documented; the CIA attribution is the Post's sourced reporting from officials, which the CIA has not confirmed. Graded PROBABLY_TRUE and attributed.

Pete Hegseth owns this policy — command responsibility on the record, not inference.

Hegseth announced Operation Southern Spear by name in November 2025 and has repeatedly publicized and celebrated the strikes. Whatever one concludes about their legality, the Secretary of Defense has claimed the campaign as his own — which is exactly why it belongs in this hub.

Alexandra Bravo, the Ecuadorian prosecutor assigned to the three boat cases, was assassinated on June 14, 2026.

Bravo was shot dead by a motorcycle gunman in Manta; her sister, who shielded her, was also killed. Her assigned police protection was not present, and authorities opened a probe into a possible internal security breach. Corroborated by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and wire coverage — not a single-source claim. We state it as fact and draw no conclusion about who ordered it.

Bravo faced internal pressure to bury the US angle of her investigation.

Two independent sources describe institutional obstruction: a Manta police source told Drop Site she was pressured by superiors to treat the strikes as mere 'disappearance' cases, and a Human Rights Watch researcher recalled her facing 'internal challenges within the institution itself,' with other agencies refusing to share information. Graded PROBABLY_TRUE — multiple sources, but sourced to accounts rather than documents, and about pressure, not her death.

The strikes are the scandal; the murder is a warning, not a verdict.