The family of a Colombian man who was killed in a U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean has lodged a complaint against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The family of 42-year-old Alejandro Carranza Medina, who was killed on Sept. 15, rejected assertions there were any drugs on the vessel targeted in Washington's anti-narcotics military campaign, and insisted he was a fisherman just doing his job on the open sea.

"We know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats," reads the complaint seen by AFP on Wednesday.

U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific have killed more than 80 people on boats that Washington claims, without providing evidence, were ferrying drugs from Venezuela. Legal experts and lawmakers critical of the strikes have argued that the military action targeting the suspected drug smuggling boats are legally dubious.

Family members and victims' governments insist some of those killed were fishermen, and rights groups say the strikes are illegal even if the targets were in fact drug traffickers.

The IACHR complaint said Hegseth gave the orders "despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings" it said were "ratified" by President Trump.

The IACHR is a quasi-judicial body of the Organization of American States, created to protect human rights in the region.

In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth said the U.S. has "only just begun striking narco-boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean." He noted a recent pause in strikes, explaining that "it's hard to find boats to strike right now."

"Deterrence has to matter," he said. "Not arrest and hand over and then do it again, the rinse-and-repeat approach of previous administrations."

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has called the U.S. strikes "extrajudicial executions," has vowed support for the family in its quest for justice.

"My lawyer Dan Kovalik has begun the legal defense of the Carranza family, victims of the American assassination of Alejandro Carranza, the fisherman from Santa Marta killed by a missile fired at his boat in the Caribbean and poor in solidarity," Petro wrote on social media on Monday.

A "good man," widow says
In an interview with AFP in October, Carranza's widow Katerine Hernandez, said he had been a "good man."

He left behind four children.

"He had no ties to drug trafficking, and his daily activity was fishing," Hernandez said.

"Why did they just take his life like that?" she asked during the interview. "The fishermen have the right to live. Why didn't they just detain them?"

Before his last trip, Carranza told his father he was heading to a spot "with good fish."

Days passed without contact, until the family learned of the bombing on television.

"The days went by and he didn't call," Hernandez said.

Friends interviewed by AFP also insisted Carranza was a fisherman.

"He went offshore to catch sierra, tuna, and snapper, which are found far out at this time of year," said Cesar Henriquez, who has known him since childhood.

"He always came back to Santa Marta, secured his boat, and went home. I never knew him to do anything bad," Henriquez told AFP.

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