Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced

G IRIA Venezuela AP One was a fisherman struggling to eke out a living on 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 people killed since early September when the U S military began attacking boats that the Trump administration alleges were smuggling drugs President Donald Trump and top U S personnel 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 comprehensive account of those who died in the strikes In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela s breathtaking northeastern coast from which a few of the boats departed residents and relatives declared the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang The bulk of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time making at least per trip residents and relatives stated 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 cinderblock homes that can go weeks without water facility and regularly lose power for several hours a day They awoke to panoramic views of a national park s tropical forests the Gulf of Paria s shallows and the Caribbean s sparkling sapphire waters When the time came for their 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 brokers the Venezuelan cabinet or the Trump administration They explained they were incensed that the men were killed without due process In the past their boats would have been interdicted by the U S administration and the crewmen charged with federal crimes affording them a day in court The U S regime should have stopped them a man s relative mentioned It has been hard for relatives to learn much about their dead loved ones because criminal gangs and the Venezuelan cabinet have long repressed the flow of information in the region Venezuelan leaders have blasted the U S regime over the strikes and the nation s ambassador to the U N called the attacks 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 cabinet did not respond to a request for comment The Trump administration has justified the strikes by declaring drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and revealed the U S is now in an armed conflict with them Trump has explained each sunken boat has saved 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 revealed in a comment to the AP that the Defense Department has consistently explained 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 vessels killing more than people Nine of the craft were targeted in the Caribbean and at least three of those had departed from Venezuela according to the Trump administration The military is striking the boats at the same time the administration is applying increasing pressure on Venezuelan President Nicol s Maduro The Justice Department doubled a reward for his arrest to million and the U S military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela and has flown pairs of supersonic heavy bombers along the country s coast Relatives and acquaintances commented they have verified the deaths through word-of-mouth and inexplicit social media posts that sought to convey information about the dead men without drawing the attention of Venezuelan functionaries 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 okay Venezuelan administration residents reported have also searched certain of the homes of the dead men I want an answer but who can I ask mentioned a relative of one of the men I can t say anything The fisherman A native of G iria a village on the southeast side of the peninsula Robert S nchez dropped out of school as a teenager and like multiple others in the region became a fisherman like his father according to friends and relatives The -year-old was considered among the peninsula s best pilots they declared having spent the better part of three decades mastering the area s currents and winds so much so he could tackle the waters at night without instruments As part of hired crews the father of four spent his days fishing for snapper kingfish and dogfish The fisherman wished to save enough money to buy a -horsepower boat engine so he could operate his own boat and not work for others It was a dream S nchez knew he was likely to never realize relatives commented The majority of his income about 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 Sucre was once home to several fish processing plants an auto assembly plant and a large community university all of which offered well-paying jobs Most of have shuttered The peninsula is dotted by the unfulfilled promises of years of a self-described socialist establishment including an abandoned shipyard and the rusted infrastructure meant for a natural gas complex 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 S nchez s goal of owning a boat engine are what pushed the fisherman to accept an offer to help traffickers approach the tricky waters he knew so well friends and relatives stated S nchez had just finished offloading a day s catch last month when he reported 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 S nchez s youngest son a third grader could not accept for days that his father was gone He kept asking adults if his father could have survived the explosion noting he might still be at sea No the adults stated the boy His father was gone One of the first to die Luis Che Mart nez was killed in the first strike A burly -year-old Mart nez was a longtime local crime boss and he made bulk of his living smuggling drugs and people across borders according to several people who knew him He had been jailed by Venezuelan functionaries on human-trafficking charges after a boat he had operated capsized in December killing about two dozen people law enforcement leaders declared at the time Among those who died in the accident were two of his sons and a granddaughter relatives narrated the AP The AP was not able to determine the disposition of his criminal affair but Mart nez was eventually disclosed from custody and returned to smuggling people and drugs according to acquaintances Though they detested what he did for a living and the control Mart nez and similar criminals exerted over their villages several residents disclosed they appreciated how Mart nez 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 He also bet heavily on cockfights a popular pastime a bird breeder revealed Mart nez was killed a relative and several acquaintances commented in the first known U S strike which took place Sept Trump expeditiously took to social media to claim the vessel had departed from Venezuela and had been carrying drugs The -man crew the president announced had been members of the Tren de Aragua gang He noted all men were killed and also posted a short video clip of a small vessel appearing to explode in flames Mart nez s relatives noted they did not believe the underworld figure was a member of that gang They revealed they have been provided no information from the Venezuelan ruling body about his fate They figured it out when they came across a photo of a body that had washed ashore in Trinidad The photo had been shared on social media and messaging apps and depicted a badly mutilated body The people familiar with Mart nez revealed they knew instantly the stout corpse was Mart nez because on his left wrist was strapped one of his majority treasured belongings an ostentatious watch The former cadet and bus driver Dushak Milovcic was drawn to crime by the adrenaline rush and money so much that he dropped out of the country s National Guard Academy according to those who knew him He started as a lookout for agents they announced 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 plenty of 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 when it had broken down The administration 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 making it nearly impossible for him to feed and clothe his family Villagers commented 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 being targeted by U S missiles In their place villagers commented they had been increasingly hiring novices like Fuentes Fuentes recounted 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 advised friends and he readily agreed to join another crew Fuentes was killed in a missile strike last month friends reported the precise one unknown - Konstantin Toropin contributed from Washington This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation The AP is solely responsible for all content - Contact the AP s global investigative group at Investigative ap org or https www ap org tips Source