Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@

guardian.co.tt

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says that as of yes­ter­day evening, no miss­ing per­sons re­ports had been filed for four Erin fish­er­men who are be­lieved to have been kid­napped in Venezue­lan wa­ters.

On Sun­day, it was re­port­ed that the men, iden­ti­fied on­ly by their nick­names, K-man, Plaits, Keeb­wey and Ade­cat, were kid­napped af­ter trav­el­ling to Venezue­lan wa­ters. A ran­som of US$20,000 was re­port­ed­ly de­mand­ed.

The cir­cum­stances be­hind their vis­it to Venezuela be­fore the kid­nap­ping re­mained un­clear up to yes­ter­day evening.

Videos show­ing one of the cap­tives tied and beat­en on the ground have since been shared on so­cial me­dia, prompt­ing fur­ther con­cern among rel­a­tives.

Speak­ing with re­porters af­ter a pass­ing out pa­rade and cer­e­mo­ny for new po­lice of­fi­cers at the Po­lice Train­ing Acad­e­my yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro said the South-West­ern Di­vi­sion had re­ceived no miss­ing per­sons re­port and was un­sure where the kid­nap­ping claim orig­i­nat­ed.

While stress­ing that he was un­sure of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the pur­port­ed kid­nap­ping, he re­ferred to past in­stances in which peo­ple agreed to trans­port il­le­gal items across the Trinidad and Venezuela bor­der and were held cap­tive if they were un­able to pay.

“We had in­tel­li­gence re­ports... of a par­tic­u­lar per­son with whom they jour­ney to that oth­er side for the pur­pose of oth­er acts, and they take cer­tain items on con­sign­ment, and when they are un­able to pay, there are cer­tain things that hap­pen to them.

“Now I am not say­ing that this is the case, be­cause we have no re­port and we have done no in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the pass­ing out pa­rade, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der en­dorsed con­tin­ued US mil­i­tary strikes against sus­pect­ed drug traf­fick­ers off the coast of Venezuela, say­ing many of the chal­lenges fac­ing T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty could be linked to il­lic­it traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions.

“We have strong part­ners... strong part­ners in the Amer­i­cans, they are in our re­gion tak­ing down ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al crime in the open wa­ters.

“They are go­ing about seek­ing the big fish, and we, the Gov­ern­ment and many law-abid­ing cit­i­zens in T&T, are grate­ful for their as­sis­tance.”