Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les has ex­pressed deep con­cern for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fish­er­men fol­low­ing a re­cent Unit­ed States mil­i­tary strike on ves­sels al­leged­ly linked to nar­co-ter­ror­ism.

Two Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als were among six peo­ple killed af­ter the airstrike on a small ves­sel in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters near the coast of Venezuela ear­li­er this week.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing her vis­it to the Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions on Thurs­day, Beck­les said, “I can on­ly go by the re­ports that I have read in the press. I have lis­tened to what the par­ents said that they, at least one of them, that’s the one from Las Cuevas went to Venezuela and was mak­ing sev­er­al at­tempts to re­turn. Lis­ten­ing to those who live in the vil­lage, they in­di­cat­ed that he was a fish­er­man. My con­cern has al­ways been what would hap­pen to the fish­er­men of T&T know­ing that we have a sce­nario where we heard the Prime Min­is­ter say­ing very clear­ly to kill them vi­o­lent­ly.”

Beck­les added that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment does not con­done any­one in­volved in traf­fick­ing or the il­le­gal drug trade. “But we un­der­stand that there is in­ter­na­tion­al law, we un­der­stand peo­ple hav­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to prove their in­no­cence. We don’t have any par­tic­u­lar in­for­ma­tion of what was on that boat.”

She ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased, say­ing, “I recog­nise that the Unit­ed States has tak­en a par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion as it re­lates to peo­ple who are traf­fick­ing in drugs. We main­tain as a mem­ber of Cari­com that this re­gion should be a zone of peace.”