Guests
- Camila Lourdes Galarzainvestigative journalist and labor organizer based in Quito, Ecuador.
- Juanita Goebertusdirector of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch.
U.S. boat strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed at least 221 people since September, while the Trump administration has provided no evidence linking the vessels or their passengers to drug trafficking. Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo was fatally shot on June 14 by a hitman in the city of Manta. Bravo had been investigating U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats in which 36 passengers survived, many of them recounting alleged torture by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship.
The allegations of U.S. boat strikes and torture Bravo was investigating “are a reflection of the growing U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Ecuador,” says Camila Lourdes Galarza, an investigative journalist and labor organizer based in Quito. Lourdes Galarza says that during Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s reelection last year, former Blackwater mercenaries patrolled voting sites at gunpoint.
“The Trump administration has deepened U.S. security cooperation with Ecuador as a response to the surge in violence in [Ecuador], particularly to the growth of organized crime groups,” adds Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch. “None of the two governments have provided transparency about the nature of their security cooperation.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We turn now to Ecuador, where the recent killing of a prosecutor who was investigating reports of torture by the survivors of U.S. strikes on three separate Ecuadorian fishing vessels has sparked intensifying calls for an independent probe into the Trump administration’s military campaign in the region.
Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo and her sister were fatally shot June 14th by a hitman on a black motorcycle who opened fire on Bravo in the city of Manta, Ecuador. Bravo had been investigating U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats in which 36 on board survived, many of them recounting alleged torture by U.S. gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship.
In March, two of the fishing vessels came under attack in the eastern Pacific. A third boat disappeared January 20th along with eight of its crew members. Captain Hernán Flores was fishing with his crew about 170 miles off the coast of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands on March 17th when an unmanned drone crashed into the cabin of his boat, known as La Negra Francisca, exploding into flames. After being taken by alleged U.S. armed forces, Flores and his crew were then turned over to authorities in El Salvador. In this clip shared with Democracy Now!, Flores describes the day his fishing boat was attacked by drones.
HERNÁN FLORES: [translated] They handcuffed us and put hoods over our heads. But through the hoods, there was some visibility, very faint. I could just make out their beards. They had beards, white or yellowish, and their hair was combed back. They were speaking English, which we didn’t understand, but there was one person who translated into Spanish. …
They made a mistake, because if we had been carrying anything illicit, they would have found something, but they never found anything. A captain from El Salvador were actually surprised. He kept asking for proof of something, but they never provided any. They simply said we were shipwrecked.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Hernán Flores, captain of the Ecuadorian fishing vessel known as La Negra Francisca.
U.S. boat strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have killed at least 221 people since September. The Trump administration has provided no evidence linking the vessels or any of the passengers to drug trafficking.
This all comes as a new report by Human Rights Watch raises alarm over abuses on civilians as part of a joint U.S.-Ecuador military campaign under the government of the right-wing Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Camila Lourdes Galarza is an investigative journalist and labor organizer based in Quito, Ecuador, her latest piece for Drop Site News headlined “Prosecutor Investigating U.S. Boat Strikes and Claims of Torture Was Murdered in Ecuador.” In April, she published an investigation with Drop Site exposing the bombing and torture of 36 Ecuadorian fishermen by U.S. forces, the exposé cited during a congressional interrogation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. She’s joining us now via Zoom audio from an undisclosed location for safety after receiving death threats in Ecuador.
Thank you so much for being with us. Camila, if you can start off by explaining what happened to the Ecuadorian prosecutor and her sister, and what she was investigating?
CAMILA LOURDES GALARZA: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
So, I would like to contextualize the assassination of prosecutor Alexandra Bravo and the allegations of U.S. boat strikes and torture she was investigating, that they are a reflection of the growing U.S.-backed military dictatorship in Ecuador, which was ushered in with former Blackwater mercenaries patrolling voting sites at gunpoint a year ago and today rules through the unconstitutional rescheduling of elections, 22 martial law decrees and the mass starvation of prisoners, the suspension and dissolution of four major opposition parties and the granting of diplomatic immunity to all U.S. troops deployed last December to Manta, the very [inaudible] were murdered, effectively allowing these troops to operate with zero accountability to Ecuadorian civil and criminal law, despite an explicit constitutional ban on U.S. military bases, which was originally introduced 20 years ago precisely due to the history of U.S. military openly sinking fishing ships off the coast of Manta, and again ratified just eight months ago by 60% of Ecuadorian citizens who voted to uphold the U.S. military ban.
Alexandra Bravo was the Manta prosecutor assigned to investigate the disappearance of these three boats. And as she pursued lines of questioning in response to the allegations of torture, of starvation and abduction by these fishermen, she received immense pressure from her own superiors at the attorney general’s office to treat the cases exclusively as cases of disappearance. And she told this and confided to this into my source at the Manta police department.
In addition to this, she confided in a senior researcher at the Human Rights Watch that she was facing internal challenges trying to coordinate with other agencies such as the Galapagos military base and the port of Manta, which itself, during my original investigation, hung up the phone after we reached out and I identified myself as a journalist looking into these cases. The families of the still missing Fiorella crew members allege that the port of Manta literally shut the door in their face when they went searching for answers.
And so, Alexandra Bravo was unable to advance many, you know, answers in this investigation. And actually, in the days leading up to her assassination, she was relocated to a neighboring municipality, her entire caseload changed, and she was no longer investigating these three boats. I reached out to the attorney general’s office in Manta several times. They were unwilling to speak to me. Her replacement said that they were unable to speak to me and that the investigation is currently sealed and they cannot give any information on what they’ve found regarding her assassination.
AMY GOODMAN: In April, you published an investigation with Drop Site News exposing the bombing and torture of 36 Ecuadorian fishermen allegedly by U.S. forces. The investigation was cited during a congressional interrogation recently of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. This is a clip of Massachusetts Congressman Bill Keating during the hearing with Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the House Armed Services Committee.
REP. BILL KEATING: Let’s look back a few weeks ago, when a fishing crew ended a long day of hard fishing, scoring a full stock of albacore and swordfish on board. Without any warning or expectation, this small Ecuadorian fishing vessel, operating about 200 nautical miles off the Galapagos Islands, was militarily engaged by U.S. forces. It was hit once, then it was hit again — not a warning shot, not an interdiction, two drone strikes. Survivors described chaos and severe injuries. Our U.S. forces then handcuffed the crew at gunpoint, placed black hoods over their heads, seized and scrubbed their devices, and then held them for days. … It’s the most convoluted bull [bleep] I ever heard in my life. This should be public. This is our honor. This is what makes American a difference maker. This is what we’re proud of in America.
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH: It’s an incredible array of false accusations. Incredible.
REP. BILL KEATING: And I yield back my time.
AMY GOODMAN: “False accusation,” says Hegseth. “Incredible.” Camila Lourdes Galarza, your response? Camila? Camila, if you can respond? We seem to have lost Camila, so we’re going to move on to Juanita Goebertus, director of Americas division at Human Rights Watch, which has just released a report headlined “A Dangerous Partnership: Abuses, Unanswered Questions, and US-Ecuador Security Cooperation.” She’s joining us from Colombia. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, Juanita, could you talk about the findings in your report and this bizarre story of the United States essentially kidnapping these fishermen and dumping them in El Salvador?
JUANITA GOEBERTUS: Sure. Amy, Juan, thank you for having me. A pleasure to be with your audience.
This is a new report in which we go into how the Trump administration has deepened U.S. security cooperation with Ecuador as a response to the surge in violence in the country, particularly due to the growth of organized crime groups. And this is happening, as for context, which I think is important, in a moment in which both governments have engaged in serious human rights violations, fueled particularly because both governments are insisting in framing the confrontation with organized crime groups as a sort of war, a sort of armed conflict. None of the two governments have provided transparency about the nature of their security cooperation, the precise role of U.S. forces in these operations, nor on the human rights safeguards governing these operations.
Our report touches on one land operation in the border between Ecuador and Colombia in a place called San Martín, that resulted in the arbitrary detention of four Colombian nationals and their torture. We corroborated, through forensic evidence and analysis of their medical records, that their accounts of suffering beatings, of being waterboarded, electroshocked, of suffering a mock execution, of being threatened that if they did not confess to be a member of an organized crime group, their fingers would be cut, their nails would be put out. And all of their testimonies and the lesions that they suffered were corroborated through this forensic analysis.
And then we also go in depth into the three vessel cases that the colleague that was speaking before was mentioning. We were able to document, in the three cases that took place between January and March this year, that there were consistent and very compelling accounts pointing to potential U.S. involvement. The different testimonies that we collected mentioned that they saw a black — sorry, a white and blue vessel that was following them, doing surveillance, that had a U.S. flag. They mentioned being surveilled by drones. Two of the vessels reported being attacked by explosive drones. Four of the crew members on those two vessels were seriously injured. And again, we documented their injuries and corroborated their testimonies with forensic expert analysis. And then, as it was being mentioned, they are approached by this vessel, which has the U.S. flag. The people on board have khaki camouflage. The testimonies report them having U.S. insignia on their uniforms. They are arbitrarily detained, taken to the Salvadorian Coast Guard. And for context, El Salvador is very far away from Galapagos Islands. And they were taken to El Salvador and, only days later, sent back to Ecuador.
We checked the criminal records on all of these people, both on the land operation and on the vessel cases. None of them had any judicial proceeding for violent or potentially violent crimes, nor for narcotrafficking or for any participation in organized crime group.
And then, the third vessel, the two surviving crew members were fishing outside of the boat. They report seeing a white column of smoke going out the vessel. They go back to their vessel, and the vessel and the other eight crew members are missing.
So, we have been asking U.S. authorities for responses on these cases. They’ve told The Guardian that regarding the vessels, there was neither DOD nor Coast Guard participation, but they have not mentioned if other U.S. agencies were involved. And we’re demanding the U.S. government and U.S. Congress to provide answers on these cases.
In the case of the land operation in San Martín, both the U.S. and the Ecuadorian governments have claimed that it was a partnered operation and a successful one, regardless of the fact that it’s very clear that they striked places that had no relation to organized crime.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to go back to Camila Lourdes Galarza. Camila, President Noboa, who was born in Miami from a wealthy family, has a banana empire there. He’s supposedly cracking down on drug trafficking and crime, but yet his own family shipping boats were caught trafficking 29 million euros of cocaine to Croatia. And could you talk about this, the role of the president? Also, he is one of the founders of the so-called Shield of the Americas, this coalition of right-wing governments across Latin America that President Trump has put together.
CAMILA LOURDES GALARZA: Absolutely. Yes, 26 million euros of cocaine were found aboard the private boats of Noboa’s family shipping corporation. And none of these draconian measures that — nor the return of Operación Cóndor-style tactics, nor the military curfews and checkpoints placed on 70% of the nation in recent months has made Ecuador any safer. In fact, a report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft recently revealed that Ecuador is now the most violent nation in the Western Hemisphere.
And it, furthermore, as you point out, becomes increasingly difficult to view this as anything other than the intentional engineering of a cartel economy to manufacture consent for the Monroe Doctrine, when President Noboa himself has been found to have ties to drug trafficking. He also appointed the personal attorney and corporate attorney of Noboa Trading, who defended the drug traffickers caught in this raid, as our minister of health. We have since had several changes of ministers of health. But it shows that there is not a true interest in combating this, right? And that is further exemplified by U.S.-Ecuadorian joint operations purporting to target drug traffickers, which are instead drone striking, waterboarding and torturing innocent farmworkers, I believe the colleague was just speaking to, you know, reporting that contrary to Pentagon intelligence, there was no evidence of drug trafficking on the farm that they bombed.
And so, we have not only seen a misapplication of the martial law regime that Ecuadorians have been living under for two years now, but also allegations from Ecuador’s infamous Los Tiguerones cartel, in which one of the heads of this cartel alleged that Noboa had struck a deal with the organized crime group to deliver votes for his campaign. So, this is a stark contrast to the political jargon used to justify Operation Southern Spear and the drone striking of these three particular boats, who, unlike Noboa’s family ships, were searched and cleared by Ecuadorian authorities prior to the bombing, found to not be carrying any drugs.
AMY GOODMAN: Camila Lourdes Galarza, we want to thank you for being with us, investigative journalist and labor organizer based in Quito, Ecuador. We’ll link to your Drop Site News articles. Please stay safe. And Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, speaking to us from Colombia. Thank you both for being with us.
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