If they have so much technology, why did they attack us?": Ecuadorian fishermen bombed in an operation blamed on the CIA

"If they have so much technology, why did they attack us?": Ecuadorian fishermen bombed in an operation blamed on the CIA - Author, Ángel Bermúdez - Author's title, BBC News Mundo - Publication date - Reading time: 9 min The day they sank the Negra Francisca Duarte II, the sea was calm. It happened on March 17th. It was one thirty in the afternoon and their crew, 16 Ecuadorian fishermen, were taking some fresh air and resting sitting on the bow deck after lunch. They were navigating about 170 nautical miles back to the port of Manta, on the Ecuadorian Pacific coast, after two weeks of work. Their captain and owner, Hernán Flores, was in the bridge alongside the sailor guiding the ship and one of the fishermen, named Jordy, who was resting on a bunk. "Captain, two drones are coming close to the boat," Flores recalls telling him a sailor. "Leave them, they are probably filming," he replied just seconds before feeling a loud explosion in the cabin. "A terrible screech was in our ears and I felt something hot running behind my head. I touched it with my hand and it was pure blood. Then, I looked back and there was Jordy, with a terrible cut on his foot," Flores tells BBC Mundo. Instantly, everything was chaos. Flores lowered the ship's speed and got out of the cabin. The fishermen were screaming, everyone was stunned, some were injured, and the ship had caught fire. One of them took a fire extinguisher to try to put out the flames, but there was another explosion and the fire spread rapidly. Two of them began to bring the auxiliary boats closer to evacuate the ship when other explosions occurred and some fishermen fell into the water. One by one, as they could, they boarded the boats. Flores was among the last. "That drone was on the deck. It was a small drone with four blades and a tube in the middle. I was watching it because I wanted to grab it, but at the same time I was scared. And I thought, that's going to explode," Flores tells BBC Mundo. From Galapagos to El Salvador But the misfortune that the crew of the Negra Francisca would experience did not end there. Once on the boats, they decided to approach a blue ship they had seen an hour before the incident with the drone and which was about three nautical miles away from them. They presumed, by the type of vessel, that it was a tuna boat. Then, something unexpected happened: as they tried to get closer, the blue ship seemed to move away from them. At the same time, a "miniaircraft" appeared in the sky, circling around them. "We were scared, we were already dazed and I said: this time they will kill us," the fisherman recounts. However, there were no more attacks, but there was a surprise. When the boats reached the blue ship, Flores discovered that some men were boarding them who spoke English, wore long guns, and were dressed in brown military suits. The men pointed their weapons at them and made them get onto the ship, where they were handcuffed and put hoods on their heads, forcing them to sit on the deck. There, some interpreters asked them in Spanish to identify themselves one by one and warned them not to speak "to avoid problems". Without being informed of their destination or anything else, the fishermen spent hours sitting on the ship's metal deck, which was burning during the day and cold at night. They were given a bottle of water and, at night, some emergency aluminum thermal blankets. The ship sailed all night and the next morning, the fishermen were handed over as "castaways" to members of the Salvadoran coast guard, who attended to them and transported them to their country, from where the fishermen could make the required procedures to return to Ecuador. A CIA operation? The case of the Negra Francisca has some similarities with the around 70 attacks carried out by the United States in the context of the "Southern Spear" operation initiated in September 2025 in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and which left more than 200 dead. In those cases, the US forces destroyed supposed "narcoterrorist" vessels from Latin America and the Caribbean through air attacks. But, at the same time, there is a notable difference: the case of the Negra Francisca is one of three known attacks whose authorship the US authorities have not recognized. The other two occurred on March 26th against the vessel Don Maca (which left 20 survivors) and on January 20th against the vessel Fiorella, which left eight missing and two survivors. In response to a BBC Mundo inquiry, the US Southern Command -responsible for the "Southern Spear" operation- said they had no knowledge of these events and affirmed that their forces had not participated in them. Billy Navarrete, president of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights CDH Guayaquil, points out that these cases follow a similar pattern that includes, for example, that the vessels had been subjected to prior monitoring by drones or ships before the attacks. Another common element is that after the attacks, the survivors were boarded onto what he describes as "gringo ships," in which they received treatment as detainees, with hoods, handcuffs, and communication blackout, before finally being handed over to the Salvadoran Navy. The case of the Fiorella is a little different. Its crew notified the land that it was being followed by a ship and a drone days before its "disappearance" and the survivors are two fishermen who had gone fishing in a boat to a remote place, so they only saw a column of smoke in the distance coming from the main ship. The remains of the Fiorella have not been found, but its remains were found. An investigation by The Washington Post holds that these attacks were carried out as part of a CIA covert operation, although the newspaper recognizes that many elements regarding the supposed participation of this US intelligence agency are unclear. BBC Mundo consulted the CIA on this matter, but at the time of publishing this note we had not obtained a response. "In each of the incidents, a high-end executive plane equipped with specialized surveillance technology flew from El Salvador towards the fishing vessels on the day of the attacks and in the days prior, according to flight and ship tracking data. The details about the aircraft, as well as the pattern of their flights before the incidents, suggest that it could be linked to the CIA's secret program," the American newspaper pointed out. "Why did they attack us?" A question that the crew of the Negra Francisca, as well as those of the other vessels, still ask is why they were attacked. Hernán Flores points out that a few hours before being attacked by the drone, his ship had been boarded by the Ecuadorian Coast Guard, which for almost four hours conducted a thorough inspection of the vessel and its cargo. He added that Ecuadorian fishing boats are subject to very strict controls by the Port Authority, which even knows the amount of fuel each vessel carries and gives its approval before sailing. Furthermore, he points out that all boats are equipped with satellite trackers that prevent the vessels from moving outside the permitted areas because doing so can result in sanctions. "The Ecuadorian coast guard had already inspected us. The other blue ship never approached us. If they thought we had something wrong, they could have approached and we would have stopped, because what one must do, one fears nothing," says Flores. "If they have so much technology, drones, an airplane, why did they bomb us? We had no knowledge that they were going to attack us. That blue ship never called us or approached us. And at the moment we tried to survive, we went to look for that blue ship, we did not run," he adds. Billy Navarrete, from CDH Guayaquil, also points out that the fact that the survivors were handed over to the Salvadoran Navy as "castaways" is a significant element. "Even in court hearings it is repeated that they are castaways, but it is avoided to point out that the vessels were destroyed premeditatedly. A castaway is not stopped by it, is not handcuffed. They are given help to recover their health," he points out. Navarrete affirms that, from the point of view of human rights, there were different types of violations. "There is harm to the presumption of innocence, there is arbitrary deprivation of liberty, there is harm to physical integrity, forced disappearance, and harm to private property," he indicates. The crew of the three ships and their families also suffer what they consider a lack of interest and support from the Ecuadorian authorities. "Here, from the authorities, no one has helped us. No one was interested in the case, no one," says Hernán Flores. Navarrete questions the lack of diligence by the Ecuadorian authorities to investigate what happened in these cases and points out that although the Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation, there have been no major advances. He indicates that they met in April with the prosecutor handling the case and that she complained that "there were no facilities from the Port Authority, which leads and has all the technical powers to look for the missing and investigate these destructions." BBC Mundo consulted the Ecuadorian authorities about these cases, but at the time of publishing this note we had not received a response. In a separate case, on October 7th, a court in Manta declared 32 Ecuadorian fishermen innocent whose vessels -the ships María Candelaria and Conquista II- were sunk by US forces in the Pacific and who had been accused by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office of "association for crime". According to the US Southern Command, these vessels supplied fuel at sea to boats that transport drugs to North America, according to the Ecuadorian press. The ships were sunk between August 28th and September 16th. However, during the trial, the court considered that these accusations were not proven. - Download the new BBC World Service app. Choose BBC News Mundo and receive news alerts, documentaries and analysis, all in one place. Important: the new application is not available in the United Kingdom or the United States. - You can also follow us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X and on our WhatsApp channel. - And don't forget to subscribe here to our newsletter to receive a special selection of our best content every Friday.