An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is still gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion on the killing of two Trinida­di­an fish­er­men in a US Navy airstrike off Venezuela ear­li­er this week.

Con­firm­ing this yes­ter­day, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Ju­nior Ben­jamin said, “Our of­fi­cers are out try­ing to find the fam­i­lies of the two men.”

How­ev­er, up to 3 pm yes­ter­day, he said of­fi­cers had not been able to speak to all the par­ties con­cerned. He said there has still been no clear ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the iden­ti­ties of the men who were on board the boat. The men have been iden­ti­fied by their fam­i­lies and friends as Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Richie Sama­roo.

Ben­jamin said once the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion has been ob­tained, the TTPS will be able to de­cide what kind of sup­port to of­fer the fam­i­lies. This, he said, could in­clude coun­selling by the Wit­ness and Vic­tim Sup­port Unit.

How­ev­er, Joseph’s rel­a­tives said they felt de­sert­ed by the au­thor­i­ties. A fe­male rel­a­tive yes­ter­day said no one had vis­it­ed their Las Cuevas home to speak with them since the in­ci­dent on Tues­day. She ques­tioned why pic­tures of him when he was 18 and had been de­tained by po­lice in con­nec­tion with a drug haul were on­ly sur­fac­ing now.

Re­gard­ing the airstrike, which the US says was part of its con­tin­u­ing crack­down on nar­co-traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ty em­a­nat­ing out of Venezuela, Ben­jamin said, “The TTPS is try­ing to bring about a re­duc­tion in the il­le­gal gun and drug trade and what is com­ing in­to the coun­try.”

He ad­vised per­sons that it was not too late to turn away from this kind of lifestyle and be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue yes­ter­day, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said he too was, “await­ing cred­i­ble and ver­i­fi­able con­fir­ma­tion with re­spect to the per­sons who you sug­gest are lo­cals.”

Speak­ing briefly as he head­ed in­to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said, “Rel­a­tives of two men be­lieve that they were killed.”

In the ab­sence of a pas­sen­ger man­i­fest, he said, “I sug­gest­ed ear­ly that the fam­i­ly should have gone and made an of­fi­cial re­port and give the po­lice the in­for­ma­tion that they would have. It would be eas­i­er for the po­lice to do their work, but that doesn’t ex­ist.”

Brush­ing aside the ru­mours that con­tin­ue to swirl in the pub­lic do­main, Alexan­der as­sured, “Once the in­for­ma­tion comes to law en­force­ment or to my min­istry, I will en­sure that law en­force­ment takes the ap­pro­pri­ate steps to un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing.

“If we are able to iden­ti­fy the per­sons if they are in fact so, and if they have bod­ies, we’ll have the bod­ies hand­ed over to the fam­i­ly as the case may be.”

Re­gard­ing claims by US of­fi­cials that the boat con­tained il­le­gal nar­cotics, Alexan­der ques­tioned, “What in­for­ma­tion, if any, does the Gov­ern­ment have from the US that would con­firm that these men had nar­cotics on the boat?”

He added, “As I said be­fore, there are cer­tain things we wouldn’t dis­cuss just yet un­til we get a full re­port from the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States.”

Ref­er­enc­ing claims by Joseph’s rel­a­tives that he had gone to make a run and end­ed up spend­ing three months in Venezuela, Alexan­der said, “I was hop­ing prob­a­bly it’s crick­et but I didn’t see him in the T20 the oth­er day, so it couldn’t be crick­et, right?”

He urged re­porters to probe deep­er and ask per­ti­nent ques­tions such as, “What run you’re talk­ing about?”

Alexan­der claimed these in­ci­dents con­tin­ued to oc­cur out­side lo­cal wa­ters.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, for­mer Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said, “We’ve sound­ed a very clear warn­ing from the on­set of the mil­i­tary mo­bil­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment that Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to con­sid­er its po­si­tion very, very care­ful­ly in these mat­ters.”

How­ev­er, he said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s warn­ings were dis­re­gard­ed.

“In a very cav­a­lier and bel­liger­ent fash­ion, the Prime Min­is­ter and her min­is­ters have firm­ly as­so­ci­at­ed them­selves with things like killing them vi­o­lent­ly, not de­mand­ing any ev­i­dence, in­for­ma­tion, de­tail, lo­ca­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, as­sis­tance with re­mains or any­thing along those lines,” he said.

“So here we are. Now it has af­fect­ed our own peo­ple. The Prime Min­is­ter is dodg­ing the me­dia, not re­spond­ing to ques­tions. The Min­is­ter of De­fence and oth­ers are now find­ing them­selves hid­ing on this very fun­da­men­tal ques­tion.”

Browne was crit­i­cal of Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the air strikes, say­ing, “When Colom­bians were re­port­ed­ly af­fect­ed, the Prime Min­is­ter re­spond­ed in a very dis­mis­sive man­ner to the pres­i­dent of Colom­bia.

“This is not what Trinidad and To­ba­go is about. We be­lieve in do­mes­tic law, in­ter­na­tion­al law, mar­itime law, and it’s the first time we’ve found our­selves po­si­tion­ing this coun­try in such an un­for­tu­nate man­ner with­in Cari­com and with­in the hemi­sphere.”

He prayed that bet­ter sense would pre­vail and that, “the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment will ad­just their rhetoric and the for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion to be more in line with the prin­ci­ples and stan­dards of T&T and the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter.

Mean­while, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump al­so yes­ter­day con­firmed an­oth­er strike, this time on an al­leged drug-laden sub­ma­rine off Venezuela.

“We at­tacked a sub­ma­rine, and that was a drug-car­ry­ing sub­ma­rine built specif­i­cal­ly for the trans­porta­tion of mas­sive amounts of drugs,” Trump said while host­ing the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent at the White House.

(See oth­er sto­ry)