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

"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 complaint seen by AFP on Wednesday.

US strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific have killed more than 80 people on boats Washington claims, without providing evidence, were ferrying drugs from Venezuela.

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.

The IACHR complaint 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" it said were "ratified" by US President Donald Trump.

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

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.