CNN: Britain suspends information sharing with US on Caribbean boats

According to Isna, CNN wrote about this: Britain’s decision shows the country’s significant distance from its closest ally and intelligence partner, the United States, and highlights growing doubts about US military strikes throughout Latin America.

“For years, Britain, which owns a number of Caribbean territories and has deployed its intelligence assets there, has helped the United States find ships suspected of carrying drugs so that the United States Coast Guard can seize them,” CNN News TV reported, citing Akah sources. “This means ships are stopped, their crews are detained and their drugs are seized.”

This information was usually sent to the Interagency Task Force South, a Florida-based task force that includes representatives from a number of partner countries and works to reduce the illegal drug trade.

“But shortly after the US began deadly attacks against the boats in September, Britain became concerned that the US might be using information provided by the UK to select targets,” the US outlet added.

“British officials believe the US military strikes, which killed 76 people, violate international law and that the intelligence freeze began more than a month ago,” the sources told CNN.

Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently said that these attacks “violate international law” and are equivalent to “extrajudicial killings”.

The sources also told CNN that Britain “concurs” with this assessment.

The British Embassy in Washington, the Pentagon and the White House have not yet commented on this matter.

CNN further reported, quoting these informed sources: “Before the US military began blowing up the boats in September, the fight against illegal drug trafficking was carried out by law enforcement and the US Coast Guard. Cartel members and drug traffickers were treated as criminals with due process rights; Something Britain would gladly help with. But President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that the US military can legally kill suspected smugglers because they pose an imminent threat to Americans who are in an armed conflict with the United States.

In addition to Britain, Canada is another key ally of the United States that has helped the US Coast Guard arrest suspected “drug traffickers in the Caribbean” for nearly 2 decades.

CNN reported about Canada, which also distanced itself from US military strikes.

Sources familiar with the matter told this American outlet: “Canada plans to continue its cooperation with the Coast Guard, called Operation Caribbean, but the country has made it clear to the United States that it does not want its information to be used to help target boats for deadly attacks.”

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