The Guardian81%
Grieving relatives still seeking answers as US normalises ‘drug boat’ strikes 41%
By Dale Elliott0% Natricia Duncan0%
6/30/2026, 10:00:03 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Authority, and Ad Hominem, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 22.5% saturation with 161 hits. Analysis detected 950 faulty-reasoning hits from 715 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 45.8% and a BS Rank of 41% (12,522 of 21,198 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 59.10% of the article peer group.
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 and snapper.
When Joseph failed to return hours later, Charles grew increasingly worried, calling and messaging his phone with no answer.
“I started calling people and asking if they had seen him.
I kept trying to reach him,” she said.
“I sent messages.
I kept telling myself he would come back, but then I began to feel that something had happened to him.”
The truth emerged in bits and pieces: media reports, rumours of an explosion – and then the news that the boat he was on had been blown up in the Trump administration’s military campaign against vessels allegedly transporting drugs to the US.
For Joseph’s family – who knew him as a son, a brother and a father, a man who made time to play with his children at the beach – the reports were as confusing as they were devastating.
Joseph had no criminal record, said Charles, adding: “I never knew him to be involved in anything like that.”
To date more than 200 people are thought to have been killed in more than 60 strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific – the latest on 21 June.
Human rights organisations, national governments and the UN have condemned the attacks as “extrajudicial killings”, and argue that even if people on the boats were involved in smuggling – as Donald Trump claims without evidence – drug trafficking was not an offence punishable by death in the US or under international law.
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.
**“**It’s so normalised now that it doesn’t even get much attention when there is a new strike … I think people are getting somewhat numb to it,” 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.
Although the family was told that Joseph’s 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.
The family is asking for clarity and support.
“I had to tell [the children] that their father was gone,” said Charles.
“That was very hard … they never got the chance to see him, to say goodbye, or to have closure.”
He said his brother was not a criminal: “If 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.”
Ricky Joseph was one of 13 people killed in Trump’s 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.
US Southern Command (Southcom), which oversees US military activities in Latin America, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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 “Nafi”.
“I never knew him to be anything out of the way, no problems with the law … one of the nicest guys,” Taliam said of the captain.
Taliam said he did not feel St Lucia’s prime minister was to blame.
“He wasn’t the one who did anything to my boat,” Taliam said.
“The world just needs to realise that we have a psycho on the loose … Trump is a psycho.”
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3speakers24%attributed speech545writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageAdam Isacson
37 attributed words22% of attributed speech73% writer coverage
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