Davy Jones’ lock­er is the fi­nal rest­ing place at the bot­tom of the ocean for sailors and sea­far­ers. One in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the leg­end has it that sailors who meet their end fall vic­tim to the great mar­itime mon­ster–big, men­ac­ing, ten­ta­cled, with three rows of teeth, and liv­ing among ship­wrecks on the ocean floor.

For at least 27 peo­ple trav­el­ling on boats in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters in the south­ern Caribbean in the past six weeks, death came from above, not from the depths. From mis­siles from US air­craft, af­ter the US chain of com­mand de­ter­mined that the boats were fer­ry­ing drugs to the US.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his sup­port­ers’ un­sub­tle pro­mo­tion of his cre­den­tials for the No­bel Peace Prize forms a split screen with his con­sign­ing peo­ple he says are drug sus­pects to Davy Jones’ lock­er.

Let’s be clear about the ac­tions that are signed off on by Trump and his De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth. They have no sound le­gal ba­sis–ei­ther in Amer­i­can law or in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tion.

Let’s start with the ob­vi­ous. The penal­ty in Amer­i­can courts for peo­ple con­vict­ed of drug smug­gling is im­pris­on­ment, not death. It is im­posed af­ter con­vic­tion. The US Gov­ern­ment is in­vok­ing wartime pow­ers in blow­ing up the boats by des­ig­nat­ing the sus­pects as ter­ror­ists. How­ev­er, ter­ror­ism has a spe­cif­ic mean­ing in gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood terms and by in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment.

In 1994, lawyers from Unit­ed Na­tions mem­ber coun­tries came up with what they de­scribed as “le­gal norms to ad­dress the prob­lem of ter­ror­ism” in pub­lish­ing “The De­c­la­ra­tion on Mea­sures to Elim­i­nate In­ter­na­tion­al Ter­ror­ism (up­dat­ed in 1996)”. At the time, there was sharp dis­agree­ment on which ac­tions by which ac­tors con­sti­tut­ed ter­ror­ism. One man’s ter­ror­ist is an­oth­er man’s free­dom fight­er.

In 2004, the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil adopt­ed Res­o­lu­tion 1566, which sharp­ened the 1994 de­f­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism as “crim­i­nal acts, in­clud­ing against civil­ians, com­mit­ted with the in­tent to cause death or se­ri­ous bod­i­ly in­jury, or tak­ing of hostages, with the pur­pose to pro­voke a state of ter­ror in the gen­er­al pub­lic or in a group of per­sons or par­tic­u­lar per­sons (and to) in­tim­i­date a pop­u­la­tion …”

The US, reg­u­lar­ly an out­lier on Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil votes, sup­port­ed Res­o­lu­tion 1566. The Twin Tow­ers at­tack on 9/11/2001 was an act of ter­ror­ism, and the US had a right to pur­sue and kill the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble. Drug traf­fick­ers are bad peo­ple. Their car­go caus­es death, suf­fer­ing, and dis­tress. How­ev­er, their ac­tions do not come close to be­ing ter­ror­ism. There­fore, the south­ern Caribbean ex­e­cu­tions with­out tri­al are not sup­port­ed by the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion that the US it­self vot­ed for. Draw your own con­clu­sions on the im­pli­ca­tions of that.

The New York Times on Thurs­day, quot­ing anony­mous sources, tied the ear­ly re­tire­ment de­ci­sion of Ad­mi­ral Alvin Holsey–head of the US South­ern Com­mand and the mil­i­tary com­man­der over­see­ing the pol­i­cy of strik­ing the sus­pect­ed drug boats–to con­cerns that he’d raised about the strikes. The le­gal­i­ty of the strikes is murki­er than Davy Jones’ depths.

An­oth­er im­por­tant in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment to con­sid­er is the UN Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea. The US has not signed up to it, but ac­cord­ing to BBC Ver­i­fy, its fact-check and ex­plain­er op­er­a­tion, “the US mil­i­tary’s le­gal ad­vi­sors have pre­vi­ous­ly said that the US should act in a man­ner con­sis­tent with its pro­vi­sions. Un­der the con­ven­tion, coun­tries agree not to in­ter­fere with ves­sels op­er­at­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters”.

Force can be used to stop a boat that the navy/coast guard is in hot pur­suit of, “but gen­er­al­ly this should be non-lethal mea­sures”, the BBC quot­ed one ex­pert as say­ing.

Trinida­di­ans Chad Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo are re­port­ed to have been among those killed in a boat strike last week. And for the first time, there are re­ports of sur­vivors of the bomb­ings. No one in the T&T Gov­ern­ment wants to talk about sus­pect­ed Trinida­di­an ca­su­al­ties, and where re­porters did elic­it a com­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Fri­day, she said she stood by her ear­ly Sep­tem­ber com­ment to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly”.

In her ad­dress to the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in late Sep­tem­ber, she had said that the threat of gangs, guns, drugs, and smug­gling should be con­front­ed “with­in the law”.

Which is it, Madame Prime Min­is­ter?