\n<\/p>\n
It has been more than four months since Ricky Joseph left his home for the last time.<\/p>\n
His partner, Lucille Charles, and their chidren were still asleep at home on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, when Joseph, 35, set out to sea early in the morning on 13 February to fish for tuna, ballyhoo and snapper.<\/p>\n
When Joseph failed to return hours later, Charles grew increasingly worried, calling and messaging his phone with no answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started calling people and asking if they had seen him. I kept trying to reach him,\u201d she said. \u201cI sent messages. I kept telling myself he would come back, but then I began to feel that something had happened to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The truth emerged in bits and pieces: media reports, rumours of an explosion \u2013 and then the news that the boat he was on had been blown up in the Trump administration\u2019s military campaign against vessels allegedly transporting drugs to the US.<\/p>\n
For Joseph\u2019s family \u2013 who knew him as a son, a brother and a father, a man who made time to play with his children at the beach \u2013 the reports were as confusing as they were devastating. Joseph had no criminal record, said Charles, adding: \u201cI never knew him to be involved in anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Lucille Charles had called and messaged her partner\u2019s phone without answer.<\/span> Photograph: Dale Elliott<\/p>\n To date more than 200 people are thought to have been killed in more than 60 strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific \u2013 the latest on 21 June.<\/p>\n Human rights organisations, national governments and the UN have condemned the attacks as \u201cextrajudicial killings\u201d, and argue that even if people on the boats were involved in smuggling \u2013 as Donald Trump claims without evidence \u2013 drug trafficking was not an offence punishable by death in the US or under international law.<\/p>\n Analysis from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based NGO, found that news coverage of the attacks was dropping off as media interest waned.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>It\u2019s so normalised now that it doesn\u2019t even get much attention when there is a new strike \u2026 I think people are getting somewhat numb to it,\u201d said Adam Isacson, the director for defence oversight at WOLA. After Joseph disappeared, the police came by the family home to take statements and collect a photograph, but they did not give the family much information, said Charles, who finds it hard to speak about her loss.<\/p>\n Although the family was told that Joseph\u2019s remains had been found, they still do not have his body. Without a body to bury, without a clear explanation of his death, and without a trial to contest the accusations against him, they said they were suspended in raw grief.<\/p>\n The family is asking for clarity and support.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to tell [the children] that their father was gone,\u201d said Charles. \u201cThat was very hard \u2026 they never got the chance to see him, to say goodbye, or to have closure.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The remains of the fishing boat that Ricky Joseph was on.<\/span> Photograph: Dale Elliot<\/p>\n For Joseph\u2019s brother Titus, the pain hit when he saw the charred remains of the boat that his sibling had been on. \u201cWhen I got close to that boat, I felt like my brother was still there. I felt his spirit. It hurt me badly. I started crying. I could not even really handle it,\u201d he said, adding that he was struggling to come to terms with the loss.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat reminds me of him most is passing by the sea \u2026 I would remember seeing him walking from the sea or going to the sea. Every time I pass there, I think about him. I still feel like I am seeing Ricky \u2026 that is how much he is missed.\u201d<\/p>\n He said his brother was not a criminal: \u201cIf the boat was carrying so much cocaine and then it exploded and caught fire, where is the evidence? Where is the cocaine? That is what I want to know. I know Ricky. He was a fisherman. That was his life.\u201d<\/p>\n Ricky Joseph was one of 13 people killed in Trump\u2019s boat attacks to be identified in a joint investigation by 20 journalists led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism. The report found that several of the victims showed no indication of involvement in drug trafficking.<\/p>\n US Southern Command (Southcom), which oversees US military activities in Latin America, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Cameron Taliam, the owner of the boat that Joseph was on, said he did not know the fisher but knew the captain, who was known locally as \u201cNafi\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI never knew him to be anything out of the way, no problems with the law \u2026 one of the nicest guys,\u201d Taliam said of the captain.<\/p>\n <\/span>A screen grab posted by Donald Trump shows an earlier US airstrike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.<\/span> Photograph: US President Donald Trump\u2019s TRUTH Social account\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n No official accounts have been given of the attack on the boat, which took place in the waters of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Taliam said he was left to piece together scanty reports from authorities and accounts from witnesses who described seeing a US drone circling then hitting another vessel then going towards his boat.<\/p>\n Taliam, who operates a fleet of fishing vessels, said fishers were afraid to take his boats out. \u201cThey\u2019re asking me to change the colour of my boats because almost all my boats are in green and black \u2026 They feel like my boats are being targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n In St Lucia, an investigation was launched, said the prime minister, Philip Pierre. But in May \u2013 three months after the attack \u2013 he said he had yet to receive further information from Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot insist that the US gives us answers \u2026 And the sad thing is that we have had no further information on this matter,\u201d Pierre said.<\/p>\n <\/span>The prime minister of St Lucia, Philip Pierre, said as of May he had yet to received further information from the US.<\/span> Photograph: Blair Gable\/Reuters<\/p>\n Isaacson said Caribbean governments were struggling to get answers partly because they might not \u201chave much interface with the part of the US government\u201d that was carrying out the attacks.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cBut the bigger reason is that the Trump administration has been very clear that it is going to wield all of its political and economic tools against anybody who challenges these.\u201d<\/p>\n Taliam said he did not feel St Lucia\u2019s prime minister was to blame. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t the one who did anything to my boat,\u201d Taliam said. \u201cThe world just needs to realise that we have a psycho on the loose \u2026 Trump is a psycho.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been more than four months since Ricky Joseph left his home for the last time. His partner, Lucille Charles, and their chidren were still asleep at home on the Caribbean island of St Lucia, when Joseph, 35, set out to sea early in the morning on 13 February to fish for tuna, ballyhoo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[994,7248,252,24891,24893,24892,9092,2998,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-50811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-answers","9":"tag-boat","10":"tag-drug","11":"tag-grieving","12":"tag-lucia","13":"tag-normalises","14":"tag-relatives","15":"tag-seeking","16":"tag-strikes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}