THE family of a Colombian man has filed the first formal challenge to US attacks on alleged drug-carrying boats, arguing in a petition to the premier human rights watchdog in the Americas that his death was an extrajudicial killing.

The petition from the family of Alejandro Carranza says that the military bombed his fishing boat on September 15, killing all three people aboard, when he was sailing off Colombia’s Caribbean coast, in violation of human rights conventions.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights received the complaint on Tuesday and while the Trump administration has said it supports the commission’s work, the US does not recognise the jurisdiction of an international court associated with it.

The family’s lawyer, Daniel Kovalik, said that Mr Carranza’s four children and spouse want to be compensated as their loved one was their primary breadwinner.

He explained that the family chose the commission because of the obstacles that a federal case would face, but the possibility has not been ruled out either.

“The US does not subject itself to accountability, so we’re using the avenues we have before us,” Mr Kovalik said on Wednesday.

“We believe that a decision in our favour, combined with public pressure, can get us that compensation and also can end the killings in the Caribbean.”

The US military has killed more than 80 people since early September, when it began striking vessels that the Trump administration claims were carrying drugs toward the US.

The strikes began off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast and later expanded to the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The US also has built up its largest military presence in the region in generations, which many see as part of a strategy to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the complaint but the Trump administration has insisted that its intelligence confirmed that members of foreign terrorist organisations were operating the targeted vessels.

Mr Kovalik denied that Mr Carranza’s boat was carrying drugs.

The attacks have increasingly come under scrutiny after the Washington Post reported that Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” on the first boat targeted by the military on September 2 and Vice-Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley was responsible for approving the follow-on attack said to have killed two survivors of the initial hit.

Mr Hegseth has said that the admiral “made the right call” and he “had complete authority” to do so.