STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Today, we bring you the largely unreported stories of fishermen from Ecuador. The fishermen say they were attacked and their boats were destroyed, and they say the United States did it. The United States has carried out more than 50 strikes in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean since September, killing almost 200 people. The Trump administration says it is targeting alleged narcotraffickers within the law. So what really happened to those Ecuadorian fishermen? NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
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CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: For generations, the Flores family has been fishing off Ecuador's Pacific coast.
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KAHN: Many of them, along with Lisi the guard dog, live in this compound high on the hill above San Mateo's tiny harbor.
JOSE HERNAN FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "My papi started it all," says 51-year-old Jose Hernan Flores. He built the family business, but rising costs and extorting drug gangs left them with just one boat - the Negra Francisca Duarte. Flores was at the helm of the boat in early March, fishing off the Galapagos Islands.
HERNAN FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "We had been out about two weeks with a crew of 16," he says.
HERNAN FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "When, about 1:30 in the afternoon, the guys say, Captain, look. Two drones are coming at us." One then ripped through the captain's cabin.
HERNAN FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "Boom. It exploded. The cabin filled with flames," he said. His nephew Jordi Flores lay on the floor bleeding. Everyone then scrambled into two small fishing boats and headed toward a big blue ship they had seen days before. They thought it was a tuna trawler.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Flores' cousin filmed this video as he came upon the burning Negra Francisca hours later. He sent word to shore. The crew was gone. The family pressed local authorities to launch a search, and that never happened. After an agonizing week, a call came in. The crew was alive in El Salvador. Captain Flores explains.
HERNAN FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "As we got closer to that big blue boat, armed men screamed, put up your hands," he says. "The men spoke to each other in English. They tied our hands with plastic cuffs." He said they put hoods over their heads, except Flores' injured nephew, Jordi. He was taken to a makeshift medical unit to treat his sliced, bleeding foot.
JORDI FLORES: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: "I was laying there, and I could see a board on the wall. They had drawn our boat, the drones. They were all bickering over it," Jordi Flores tells me. But it was all in English, so he couldn't understand. The crew, hooded and cuffed, spent the night on the deck in the cold rain before being transferred to a Salvadoran-flagged vessel, says Captain Flores. Once on land in El Salvador, the crew had to pay their flights home. They faced no charges in the U.S., El Salvador or in Ecuador. NPR reached out to multiple U.S. agencies about the fishermen's allegations. The military's Southern Command said they had no knowledge of the incident. No one had answers either in the U.S. embassy in Quito, the U.S. Coast Guard, the White House, the CIA or the DEA, which told NPR it does not conduct kinetic strikes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: At the family compound in San Mateo, the Floreses gather in the courtyard for a Sunday game of bingo. One of the cousins calls out the numbers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Spanish).
KAHN: Jordi Flores doesn't join in. He's in his bed in his small house. Doctors say he needs a skin-graft operation that will cost $1,800. The family says they're organizing a town-wide bingo night to try and raise the funds.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, San Mateo, Ecuador. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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