@realDonaldTrump/Truth SocialEcuador has released the survivor of a US strike on a submarine alleged to have been smuggling drugs in the Caribbean.
US military forces captured the Ecuadorean national along with a Colombian citizen after they attacked the submarine the two were on. US President Donald Trump said they would be returned to their countries of origin “for detention and prosecution”.
But the Ecuadorean Attorney General’s office has said in a statement that the Ecuadorean survivor “could not be detained” because there was “no report of a crime that has been brought to the attention of this institution”.
The US has conducted a series of strikes on what it describes as drug-smuggling vessels in the region.
Ecuadorean officials had earlier identified one of the survivors of Thursday’s strike as Andrés Fernando Tufiño.
He and the Colombian man, who has been named as 34-year-old Jeison Obando Pérez, are the first two people to survive one of the strikes the US has been carrying out in the Caribbean as part of a massive counter-narcotics deployment.
Two other men aboard the semi-submersible were killed in the attack, according to Trump.
The US military has said that at least 32 people have been killed in at least seven separate strikes carried out since the beginning of September.
Experts have questioned the legality of the attacks, arguing they breach international law.
But the Trump administration has insisted that it was targeting “narco-terrorists”.
Asked about the two survivors by reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump said that they had been aboard “a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs”.
“This was not an innocent group of people,” he added. “I don’t know too many people who have submarines, and that was an attack on a drug-carrying, loaded submarine.”
The US president alleged in a post on his Truth Social account that the vessel had been carrying “mostly fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics”.
Experts on drug trafficking have pointed out that fentanyl enters the US predominantly from Mexico and not from countries bordering the southern Caribbean, where the US deployment is taking place.
Around 10,000 US troops, as well as dozens of military aircraft and ships, have been deployed to the Caribbean as part of the operation.
Trump also posted a 30-second video showing the semi-submersible in choppy waters before it was hit by at least one projectile.
The two men were rescued by a US military helicopter and then taken onto a US warship in the Caribbean, before being repatriated.
According to an unnamed official quoted by the Associated Press, the Ecuadorean survivor was in good health.
AP also reported that it had seen a document from the Ecuadorean government which outlined that “there is no evidence or indication that could lead prosecutors or judicial authorities to be certain” that Tufiño had violated any current laws in Ecuadorean territory.
The Colombian survivor arrived in his homeland “with a traumatic brain injury, sedated, medicated, and breathing with the help of a ventilator”, according to Colombia’s interior minister.
He is being treated in a hospital in the capital, Bogotá, local media reports.
The minister, Armando Benedetti, said that the man had been on “a vessel full of cocaine, and that in our country is a crime”.
The US deployment in the Caribbean has mainly been targeting vessels leaving Venezuela, according to US officials.
Trump has accused his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, of leading a drug-trafficking group called the Cartel of the Suns.
Maduro has denied the allegations and says the aim of the operations is to topple him from power.
The Venezuelan leader, whose re-election last year has not been recognised by the US and many other nations, has appealed directly to Trump, saying he wants “peace”.
But the US government has been increasing its pressure on Maduro, with Trump confirming last week that the had given to go-ahead for the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.
US officials have said that previous strikes on “narco-boats” targeted the Tren de Aragua gang, which has its base in Venezuela.
But as more boats are hit, questions about the identities of those aboard have been mounting.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the US of attacking one vessel in “Colombian territorial waters” in September, saying the strike constituted “murder”.
In response, Trump called Petro “an illegal drug leader” who had “strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia”.
He also said that the US would no longer offer aid to Colombia and threatened to impose tariffs on Colombian goods.
Media in Trinidad and Tobago have also pressured the twin island nation’s government to investigate reports that two of their nationals were killed in one of the strikes.
However, Trinidad and Tobago’s government on Tuesday expressed its “strong support for the ongoing military intervention of the United States of America in the region”.
“These operations aimed at combatting narco and human trafficking and other forms of transnational crime are ultimately aimed at allowing the region to be a true ‘Zone of Peace’ where all citizens can, in reality, live and work in a safe environment,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Additional reporting by BBC News Mundo
