HRW says US likely had role in attacks on fishing vessels off Ecuador

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the United States likely played a role in attacks on three fishing vessels off Ecuador earlier this year that left at least eight people missing.

The rights group also criticized alleged torture during Ecuador's US-backed military campaign against organized crime, including during a March operation near the Colombian border.

HRW said the sea attacks it investigated took place between January and March. It said the vessels La Negra Francisca Duarte II and Don Maca were attacked in the Eastern Pacific, and that a third vessel, Fiorella, disappeared on January 20 with eight crew members.

The group said the attacks were not among US military strikes that had been publicly announced. It said the US Department of Defense and the Coast Guard denied responsibility. HRW said its investigation, based on interviews with 62 people including 13 survivors, concluded that the United States had some level of involvement in, or knowledge of, the attacks.

According to the report, crew members of La Negra Francisca Duarte II and Don Maca said they were attacked by armed drones on March 17 and March 26 respectively. HRW said survivors reported that armed US nationals wearing military-style uniforms with US flag insignias detained them on a nearby blue-and-white vessel and then transferred them to the Salvadoran Coast Guard.

HRW said the incidents happened after the US military began strikes in September 2025 on boats it claimed were carrying drugs near Latin America. The US military publicly documented those strikes with video and casualty counts. At least 215 people were killed in those strikes, which rights groups including HRW have condemned as extrajudicial killings, saying they appeared to target civilians who did not pose an immediate threat to the United States.

HRW also examined a joint US-Ecuador military operation in March in San Martin, a village near the Colombian border in an area described as a hotspot for drug and arms trafficking. Federico Borello, HRW's deputy executive director, said Ecuadorian military personnel entered the community, arrested four farm workers, arbitrarily detained them and tortured them, including by waterboarding, beatings, electric shocks and mock executions.

HRW said the detainees were taken to a military base, tortured and interrogated again, and later released without charges. The report called on the US Congress to demand answers from the Trump administration about US security cooperation with Ecuador.