Trump says targeted boat crews are narco-terrorists. AP findings show otherwise

GÜIRIA, Venezuela — One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on $100 a month. Another was a career criminal. A third was a former military cadet. And a fourth was a down-on-his-luck bus driver.

The men had little in common beyond their Venezuelan seaside hometowns and the fact all four were among the more than 60 people killed since early September when the U.S. military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs. President Trump and top U.S. officials have alleged the craft were being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members bound with deadly drugs for American communities.

The Associated Press learned the identities of four of the men — and pieced together details about at least five others — who were slain, providing the first detailed account of those who died in the strikes.

In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang.

Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers.

The men lived on the Paria peninsula, in mostly unpainted cinder-block homes that can go weeks without water service and regularly lose power for several hours. For drug runs, they boarded open-hulled fishing skiffs that relied on powerful outboard motors to haul their drugs to nearby Trinidad and other islands.

The residents and relatives interviewed by the AP requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals from drug smugglers, the Venezuelan government or the Trump administration. They said they were incensed that the men were killed without due process. In the past, their boats would have been interdicted by the U.S. authorities and the crewmen charged with federal crimes.

Venezuelan officials have decried the U.S. government over the strikes, and the nation’s ambassador to the United Nations called them “extrajudicial executions.” They have also steadfastly denied that drug traffickers operate in the country and have yet to acknowledge that any of its citizens have been killed in boat strikes. Spokespeople for Venezuela’s government did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has justified the strikes by declaring drug cartels to be “unlawful combatants ” and said the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them. Trump has claimed that each sunken boat has saved 25,000 American lives, presumably from overdoses. The boats, however, appear to have been transporting cocaine, not the far more deadly synthetic opioids that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement to the AP that the Defense Department has “consistently said that our intelligence did indeed confirm that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment.”

So far, the U.S. military has blown up 17 vessels, killing more than 60 people. Nine craft were targeted in the Caribbean, and at least three of those had departed from Venezuela, according to the Trump administration.

Relatives and acquaintances said they have confirmed the deaths through word of mouth and in explicit social media posts that sought to convey information about the dead men without drawing the attention of Venezuelan authorities. They have also made what they described as reasonable deductions: The men have not returned phone calls or texts in weeks, or reached out to say they were OK; Venezuelan authorities, residents said, have also searched some of the homes of the dead men.

“I want an answer, but who can I ask?” said a relative of one of the men. “I can’t say anything.”

(Peter Hamlin / Associated Press)

The fisherman

A native of Güiria, a village on the southeast side of the peninsula, Robert Sánchez dropped out of school as a teenager and became a fisherman like his father, according to friends and relatives. The 42-year-old was considered among the peninsula’s best pilots, they said, and could navigate the waters at night without instruments.

As part of hired crews, the father of four wanted to save enough money to buy a 75-horsepower boat engine so he could operate his own boat. It was a dream Sánchez knew he was likely to never realize, relatives said: Most of his income — about $100 a month — went to feed his children.

He was not alone in that situation. The peninsula is part of Sucre state, one of Venezuela’s poorest.

With its proximity to the Caribbean Sea, the area is a popular transit hub for cocaine making its way from Colombia to Trinidad and other Caribbean islands before heading to Europe. Colombian cocaine destined for the U.S. is generally smuggled out of Colombia through the Pacific coast.

The larger economic pressures — and Sánchez’s goal of owning a boat engine — are what pushed the fisherman to accept an offer to help traffickers navigate the tricky waters he knew so well, friends and relatives said.

Sánchez had just finished offloading a day’s catch last month when he told his mother he would be taking a short trip and would see her in a couple of days. They had no idea where he was going.

After seeing clips on social media that mentioned his death, relatives broke the news to his mother, but not until after ensuring she had taken her blood pressure medication.

(Peter Hamlin / Associated Press )

One of the first to die

Luis “Che” Martínez was killed in the first strike. A burly 60-year-old, Martínez was a longtime local crime boss, and he made most of his living smuggling drugs and people across borders, according to several people who knew him.

He had been jailed by Venezuelan authorities on human-trafficking charges after a boat he had operated capsized in December 2020, killing about two dozen people, law enforcement officials said at the time. Among those who died in the accident were two of his sons and a granddaughter, relatives told the AP. The AP was not able to determine the disposition of his criminal case, but Martínez was eventually released from custody and returned to smuggling, according to acquaintances.

Though they detested what he did for a living — and the control Martínez and similar criminals exerted over their villages — several residents said they appreciated how Martínez contributed annually to the town’s festival of the Virgin of the Valley, the patroness of fishermen, and he spent lavishly in local shops and restaurants.

Martínez was killed, a relative and several acquaintances said, in the first known U.S. strike, on Sept. 2. The 11-man crew, Trump said in a social media post, belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. He said all of the men were killed and also posted a short video of a small vessel appearing to explode in flames.

Martínez’s relatives said they did not believe the underworld figure was a member of that gang.

They said they have been provided no information from the Venezuelan government about his fate. They figured it out when they came across a photo on social media of a badly mutilated body that had washed ashore in Trinidad. The people familiar with Martínez said they knew instantly the stout corpse was Martínez because, on his left wrist, was strapped one of his most treasured belongings: an ostentatious watch.

(Peter Hamlin / Associated Press)

The former cadet and bus driver

Dushak Milovcic, 24, was drawn to crime by the adrenaline rush and money, so much that he dropped out of Venezuela’s National Guard Academy, according to those who knew him. He started as a lookout for smugglers, they said. Though he had no experience at sea, he eventually won a promotion to the more lucrative and coveted jobs on drug-running boats.

It’s not clear how many trips he had undertaken before he was killed last month.

Juan Carlos “El Guaramero” Fuentes had operated a transit bus for several years but was facing dire financial circumstances after it broke down. The government had been unable — or unwilling — to fix it. That meant he was losing money because bus drivers in Venezuela typically pocket a portion of the fares.

(Peter Hamlin / Associated Press)

Villagers said they were not surprised that Fuentes, who had no nautical experience, turned to smuggling to make ends meet. The higher-level traffickers who typically crewed such boats had been staying ashore to avoid U.S. missiles. In their place, villagers said, traffickers had been increasingly hiring novices like Fuentes.

Fuentes told friends he had been nervous about his first smuggling run, knowing it would be filled with risks from weather, rival gangs, even the U.S. military. The September trip had gone surprisingly smoothly, he told friends, and he readily agreed to join another crew. Fuentes was killed in a missile strike last month, friends said, the precise one unknown.

Cano writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.