RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Three Erin fish­er­men, in­clud­ing Daniel Abra­ham, who were re­port­ed­ly kid­napped in Venezuela late Thurs­day, have been re­leased, but four oth­er men have now been al­leged­ly ab­duct­ed and their cap­tors are de­mand­ing a US$20,000 ran­som for their safe re­turn.

The kid­napped men were iden­ti­fied on­ly by their alias­es: K-man, Plaits, Keeb­wey and Ade­cat. A rel­a­tive of one of the men, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty for safe­ty rea­sons, con­firmed the ran­som de­mand.

“They want US$20,000 or they say the men won’t come back,” the rel­a­tive said. “A boat own­er al­ready went to drop the mon­ey. Every­body just pray­ing they re­lease them.”

Abra­ham, who was freed with two oth­ers hours af­ter be­ing tak­en, re­turned home bruised but alive. Ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives, he was caught in the mid­dle of a dis­pute he knew noth­ing about.

“They re­lease him af­ter they re­alise he went in­no­cent­ly,” a fam­i­ly mem­ber ex­plained. “He thought he was go­ing fish­ing. He didn’t know the fel­las he went with had peo­ple ow­ing mon­ey. They tell him straight—don’t ever go to sea with peo­ple you don’t know.”

The rel­a­tive said Abra­ham was beat­en dur­ing the or­deal.

“They give him slap and lash be­cause they want­ed mon­ey,” the rel­a­tive said. “But when he ex­plain he have noth­ing and didn’t know what was go­ing on, they let him go. The four oth­er fel­las—they keep them and start to ask for US$20,000.”

All three re­leased men are said to be shak­en and un­will­ing to speak pub­licly about their or­deal.

The re­port­ed kid­nap­pings come months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a stark warn­ing about il­le­gal mar­itime ac­tiv­i­ty be­tween Trinidad and Venezuela. Speak­ing ear­li­er this year, she de­clared that “any il­le­gal in­cur­sion by any uniden­ti­fied ves­sel in­to T&T wa­ters” would be met with “dead­ly force” by na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

She al­so is­sued a di­rect warn­ing to both Venezue­lan and Trinida­di­an na­tion­als en­gaged in cross-bor­der traf­fick­ing.

“If you en­ter Venezue­lan wa­ters to do your il­le­gal acts and you are caught by the au­thor­i­ties, you are on your own.”

In a lat­er in­ter­view, she re­in­forced the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion: “They are on their own. We will not spend a cent of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to as­sist them. I have re­peat­ed­ly warned that any­one caught en­gag­ing in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty abroad will face the con­se­quences.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Sean Sobers for com­ment on the lat­est kid­nap­pings. A source at the Venezue­lan Em­bassy said the mat­ter would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

T&T Charge d’Af­faires to Venezuela, Dayne-Marc Chin, was al­so con­tact­ed but re­ferred all ques­tions to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs’ com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment.