The family of 42-year-old Alejandro Carranza Medina, killed on September 15, reject assertions there were drugs on the vessel targeted in Washington's anti-narcotics military campaign, insisting he was a fisherman doing his job on the open sea.

Carranza is one of more than 80 people killed in recent weeks in US strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific on boats Washington claims, without providing evidence, were ferrying drugs.

Family members and victims' governments insist some of those killed were fishermen, and rights groups say the strikes are illegal even if the targets were in fact drug traffickers.

"We know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats," reads the family's complaint seen by AFP on Wednesday.

It claimed the United States violated several of Carranza's human rights, including his right to life and to due process.

The complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said Hegseth gave the orders "despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings."

And it said US President Donald Trump "has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth."

Despite a growing outcry, the Pentagon chief said Tuesday the United States had "only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean."

Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson insisted the strikes "are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict."

The IACHR is a quasi-judicial body of the Organization of American States, created to promote and protect human rights in the region.

- A 'good man' -

In an interview with AFP in October, Carranza's widow Katerine Hernandez said he had been a "good man." He left behind four children.

"He had no ties to drug trafficking, and his daily activity was fishing," Hernandez said.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who has called the US strikes "extrajudicial executions," has vowed support for the family in its quest for justice.

Trump has deployed the world's biggest aircraft carrier and an array of other military assets to the Caribbean, insisting they are there for counter-narcotics operations.

The administration insists it is effectively at war with alleged "narco-terrorists" and began carrying out strikes in early September.

Regional tensions have flared as a result, with Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro accusing Washington of using drug trafficking as a pretext for seeking regime change in Caracas.

Ties between Bogota and Washington are also at a low point.

Leftist Petro has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration's treatment of migrants and the boat strikes, earning him US sanctions and accusations of being involved in drug trafficking himself.

Trump removed Colombia from a list of allies in the fight against narco trafficking but the country has so far escaped harsher punishment -- possibly as Washington awaits the right's likely return to power in 2026 elections.