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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Hearing for Trinis held in Venezuela adjourned

by

20140729

Five Trinida­di­ans de­tained in Venezuela for 131 days were dis­ap­point­ed yes­ter­day when their tri­bunal hear­ing was ad­journed to Au­gust 18.

Nafeesa Mo­hammed, spokesper­son for the group, said the Venezue­lan Min­istry of Jus­tice said it need­ed more time to go through the ev­i­dence.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed said all hope was not lost.

"We con­sid­er this as a pos­i­tive sign be­cause it shows that they're con­sid­er­ing the in­for­ma­tion that our lawyers have giv­en to them, in­stead of rush­ing to make a quick judg­ment," she said.

Mo­hammed said the fam­i­lies of the five men were un­der­stand­ably dis­ap­point­ed be­cause they were hop­ing for some clo­sure to the is­sue which be­gan on March 19 when the men were held on al­le­ga­tions of ter­ror­ism.

"They're just try­ing to bear it right now be­cause that's all they can do."

She said the mat­ter was still at the tri­bunal stage and the men were yet to be for­mal­ly charged. "Un­der the Ter­ror­ism Act in Venezuela, the au­thor­i­ties can keep you for 45 days while they do their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. In this case, they first ex­tend­ed this pe­ri­od a fur­ther 20 days, but it seems like we are still in this ex­ten­sion and we're well over 100 days."

"Our in­for­ma­tion is that be­cause of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela the process is a high­ly po­lit­i­cal one. How­ev­er, we are trust­ing that the Venezue­lan jus­tice sys­tem will act fair­ly."

Mo­hammed re­newed her calls for the T&T Gov­ern­ment to use the high­est diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to en­sure that the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion with the ur­gency that it re­quired. She said For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an was "drag­ging his feet" on this is­sue.

"He has not risen to the oc­ca­sion in tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion. I made ef­forts to con­tact him be­fore the hear­ing to­day so he will know what was go­ing on. I sent him mes­sages but he has not re­spond­ed.

"There has been some sup­port but it has been min­i­mal. We are not get­ting a con­cert­ed ef­fort be­cause there is very lit­tle co-or­di­na­tion among the min­istries. I'm ap­peal­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter to please look in­to the mat­ter and see how the high­est lev­el of diplo­ma­cy can be used to bring an end to this."


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