Sept. 21 (UPI) — A special rapporteur for the United Nations human rights council said in a new briefing that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that U.S. attacks over the past year on boats allegedly carrying illegal drugs may be crimes against humanity.

Special rapporteur Ben Saul said in his briefing note that the attacks are “serial extrajudicial killings in violation of the right to life, being unjustified in national or personal self-defense or under international humanitarian law, the international law of the sea, narcotics suppression conventions or international counter-terrorism law.”

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law,” Saul’s note said.

The investigator said that while U.S. President Donald Trump has told Congress that the attacks are “self-defense” against “designated terrorist organizations,” they are, however, “contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity.”

Saul noted that the attacks have been condemned by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. independent experts, the president of the International Narcotics Control Board, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, many international lawyers and others.

“There is no right to use force in self-defense against the criminal groups listed as terrorist organization,” he wrote. “Firstly, even assuming that the vessels and crew attacked were members of the criminal groups listed as terrorist, such organizations have not mounted any ‘armed attack’ on the United States so as to trigger a right of self-defense.”

In the latest attack Saturday, U.S. Southern Command posted on social media that it “executed a lethal, kinetic strike on a go-fast vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean. Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking.The operation killed four narco-terrorists.”

It did not name those killed or give any information about the alleged intelligence that led to the fatal attack.

The Guardian reported that while Trump has said these attacks have stopped 97% of all illegal drugs entering the country by sea, reports show that the attacks have had no impact on the amount of cocaine entering the United States.

Further, The Guardian reported, those who’ve identified some of the victims have found they were sometimes innocent and sometimes “at best low-ranked participants in trafficking networks.”