Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has thanked the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary for car­ry­ing out a strike on a ves­sel in the south­ern Caribbean sus­pect­ed of trans­port­ing nar­cotics. He said he does not pity the 11 peo­ple who died on the ves­sel or any­one run­ning afoul of the law.

Tues­day’s at­tack was de­scribed by the US as a “ki­net­ic strike” car­ried out in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters against a ves­sel al­leged­ly op­er­at­ed by the Venezue­lan gang Tren de Aragua.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump claimed that 11 peo­ple he de­scribed as “nar­co-ter­ror­ists” were killed. How­ev­er, apart from show­ing a mil­i­tary video of the pre­ci­sion at­tack to jour­nal­ists dur­ing a brief­ing in Wash­ing­ton on Tues­day, he gave no oth­er ev­i­dence to sup­port the claim the ves­sel was loaded with drugs.

A video pur­port­ing to be of the at­tack on the ves­sel was post­ed on­line.

How­ev­er, Venezue­lan Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Fred­dy Ñáñez has ques­tioned the au­then­tic­i­ty of the video, sug­gest­ing it may have been cre­at­ed us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, and call­ing it an “al­most car­toon­ish an­i­ma­tion.”

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar again backed the US strike, say­ing she and “most of the coun­try” wel­comed the suc­cess of the naval mis­sion. She added that the Unit­ed States had pledged to tar­get drug car­tels and was now de­liv­er­ing on that com­mit­ment, not­ing that il­lic­it drugs and arms had brought “death and de­struc­tion” to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the past 25 years.

Gue­var­ro fol­lowed suit yes­ter­day in a voice note sent via Whats App, “I am grate­ful for the de­ci­sive US in­ter­ven­tion. The re­sources de­ployed will un­doubt­ed­ly place a sig­nif­i­cant dent in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing across the South­ern Caribbean. Let this serve as a clear warn­ing to our fish­ers of for­tune who board their pirogues chas­ing per­ilous tides of prof­it.”

He warned that the “wa­ters have changed” and ad­vised peo­ple head­ing out to sea to do so to catch fish to feed the na­tion, not as “drug smug­glers mas­querad­ing as fish­er­men.”

He said when the US ar­ma­da comes call­ing, “I wish you luck in treat­ing with what will not be a hap­py end­ing.”

Gue­var­ro said he has “ab­solute­ly no pity” for any­one caught by the US en­gag­ing il­le­gal acts.