Caribbean heads of government meeting in St Lucia this week were confronted with direct questions about deaths linked to American military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels, and largely declined to challenge Washington's conduct. At the closing press conference of the 51st regular meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government, leaders offered sympathy for those killed while avoiding any suggestion that the US had acted unlawfully.

The exchange began when Al Jazeera senior correspondent Josh Rushing asked whether the United States effectively enjoys immunity to kill citizens of Caribbean nations over suspected crimes. He pressed the point further with CARICOM chair and St Lucia prime minister Philip J. Pierre, citing the case of two St Lucians, Ricky Joseph and Nafi Williams, who have been missing since a US strike on 13 February. Rushing said evidence pointed to their deaths in that incident.

Pierre's response fell short of confirming any such link. He said the matter remains, as far as St Lucian authorities are concerned, a missing persons case. Law enforcement is still trying to establish what happened, he said, adding that the US government has not supplied any information despite requests from St Lucia. It is a striking admission: a sitting CARICOM chair, five months after the incident, still waiting on an ally for basic facts about the fate of two of his own citizens.

Trinidad and Tobago prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar took a similarly cautious line, though from a different angle. She said investigations in her own country had found no evidence that those involved in the strikes were Trinidadian nationals. Asked about the use of the word "murder," she rejected it outright. She said legal advice received by her government did not support that characterisation, and that she could only act within the rule of law based on the advice she had been given. Whoever was on those boats, she said, her position would not change without evidence to alter it.

Other leaders reinforced the bloc's reluctance to go further. Outgoing CARICOM chairman Terrance Drew, prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis, grounded his answer in the presumption of innocence, saying his country's justice system holds that principle as fundamental and that this shapes the region's broader stance. It was a legalistic answer to a question that had, in effect, asked whether the law was being followed at all.

Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley went furthest in acknowledging the complexity of the issue, without resolving it. She said the matter would become an acrimonious legal and geopolitical dispute, with disagreement likely over whether the strikes amounted to an act of war or fell within the ordinary confines of criminal law. She said she had heard both arguments made. Personally, she said, she would prefer not to see such action taken at all. Yet she also accepted that where military engagement occurs between parties, proportionate action is permitted under international norms. Two positions, held at once, by a leader who did not pretend they were easy to reconcile.

The exchange took place against a backdrop of sustained US military activity in the Caribbean Sea over recent months, targeting vessels suspected of smuggling drugs. CARICOM had previously said it needed more time to establish the facts before responding fully to the strikes. That caution was still evident in St Lucia this week.

What emerged from the press conference was a shared unwillingness among CARICOM leaders to jeopardise relations with Washington, even as a missing persons case involving two of their own citizens remains unresolved. Whether an independent account of the February strike, or of Joseph and Williams' fate, ever materialises is an open question. So is the matter of what recourse a small state has when a far larger military partner chooses not to explain a lethal incident in its own waters.