Kevon Felmine

Rel­a­tives of miss­ing Moru­ga fish­er­men Nigel Boodoo and Stephan Charles are plead­ing for the men's re­lease since they be­lieve the men are be­ing held on a se­cret mil­i­tary is­land off the coast of Venezuela. Clara Boodoo, wife of Nigel Boodoo, said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day that her hus­band and Stephan Charles were ac­cus­tomed go­ing to the deep wa­ter around the is­land to fish. Boodoo of L'Anse Mi­tan Road, Moru­ga, Charles of Fi­garie Trace, Basse Terre and an­oth­er man known on­ly as Hakim, left for the deep wa­ter fish­ing trip off just off To­ba­go since Jan­u­ary 11.

Boodoo said she be­lieved their boat en­gine might have mal­func­tioned drift­ing in­to Venezuela wa­ters where the men were picked up by the Venezue­lan Coast Guard. She said she re­ceived word from con­tacts in Venezuela that the men were tak­en to the is­land called San Jose just off the Venezuela coast. She said she has held a dis­cus­sion with For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan. The min­is­ter promised to work with the Coast Guard and the Venezue­lan Em­bassy to try to lo­cate the miss­ing duo.

Boodoo, a de­vout Hin­du, said the spir­i­tu­al leader at her tem­ple told her that her hus­band and his col­leagues were still alive and she need­ed to be vig­i­lant in her search. "My fam­i­ly is try­ing hard to deal with the sit­u­a­tion" she said. The Boodoos, who have three chil­dren ages: 17, 16, and 11, said they are try­ing to con­tin­ue there lives. She said: "We will pay any amount of mon­ey just name the price, they can keep the boat and the en­gine we just want the men back."

T&T Coast Guard: We are search­ing

The T&T Coast Guard is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive word to­day whether miss­ing Moru­ga fish­er­men are in fact be­ing held on the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary is­land of San Jose. Coast Guard Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Lt Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste said yes­ter­day rel­a­tives of the miss­ing men stat­ed that they were in­formed that the men were be­ing held at San Jose af­ter be­ing picked up by a Venezue­lan pa­trol ves­sel.

"We have asked our Span­ish in­ter­preter to li­aise with Venezue­lan con­sulate and have them make checks (on this in­for­ma­tion). We will get con­fir­ma­tion to­mor­row," Bap­tiste said. Bap­tiste said ex­ten­sive sea search­es, by the Coast Guard, Sautt and the T&T Air Guard, were con­duct­ed on the East, North and South Coast how­ev­er there was no sign of the men. RR