An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is sup­port­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in her stance that Gov­ern­ment will not be spend­ing tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to as­sist four na­tion­als re­cent­ly de­tained in Venezuela.

Con­firm­ing yes­ter­day that the men, all of Las Cuevas, had been “caught in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties,” Gue­var­ro ques­tioned why al­ready scarce fi­nan­cial re­sources should be used to ren­der as­sis­tance to them.

The four T&T na­tion­als were held aboard a pirogue ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 miles off Cabo Codera, Venezuela, be­tween Au­gust 13 and 14, with 3,000 litres of fu­el, three out­board en­gines and sev­er­al satel­lite phones. They were al­leged­ly in­ter­cept­ed en route to col­lect a ship­ment of guns and il­le­gal drugs des­tined for Trinidad, and which was be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by gangs re­port­ed­ly op­er­at­ing along the North Coast.

In a voice note yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said, “I ful­ly en­dorse one hun­dred per cent, the po­si­tion not to lend any as­sis­tance what­so­ev­er to these so-called fish­er­men who were caught in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Re­fer­ring to the ar­rests and which group/s the sus­pects were said to be as­so­ci­at­ed with, he said, “While we can­not con­firm spe­cif­ic af­fil­i­a­tions at this time, we are pur­su­ing all cred­i­ble leads and re­main com­mit­ted to dis­man­tling any en­ter­prise that threat­ens the rule of law or ex­ploits our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.”

He ac­knowl­edged and com­mend­ed of­fi­cers in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion, as he said they had been in­stru­men­tal with­in re­cent weeks in in­ter­cept­ing il­le­gal mi­grants at­tempt­ing to en­ter Trinidad.

He chal­lenged the sus­pects’ le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to say if they would be ex­er­cis­ing the “same vigour and fer­vour to get them out from that se­cure lo­ca­tion on the Venezue­lan main­land,” as had been demon­strat­ed via sev­er­al failed at­tempts to get re­lo­cat­ed pris­on­ers trans­ferred back to the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison, Arou­ca, from the mil­i­tary base at Teteron Bar­racks, Ch­aguara­mas.

Gue­var­ro said while at­tor­neys were busy stir­ring up trou­ble by “scru­ti­n­is­ing a patch on my uni­form and at­tempt­ing to use it as a dis­trac­tion in the pub­lic,” they should be called on to ac­count for not ad­vis­ing “their oth­er clients to steer clear of crim­i­nal en­ter­prise in­stead of try­ing to be fash­ion po­lice.”

He scoffed, “So, let them take up a col­lec­tion or keep a raf­fle, but make sure to write me first as Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to ob­tain the req­ui­site per­mis­sion to so­lic­it bo­li­vars for this ven­ture.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­peat­ed­ly re­in­forced her ad­min­is­tra­tion’s stance against weapons traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal mi­gra­tion and fu­el smug­gling, warn­ing that these ac­tiv­i­ties pose se­ri­ous threats to both do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty and re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

And as the pub­lic con­tin­ues to ex­press its dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the can­celled an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade sched­uled for Au­gust 31, well-placed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials urged per­sons to pay close at­ten­tion to the lo­cal crim­i­nal out­fits that were emerg­ing with al­leged links to transna­tion­al, or­gan­ised syn­di­cates such as Tren de Aragua. Se­nior of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion had ren­dered the can­cel­la­tion nec­es­sary.