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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Interpol help sought with kidnappings

by

News Desk
2366 days ago
20190201
Kidnappers train their guns at five of the six  T&T fishermen who were reportedly abducted and taken to Venezuela earlier this week. The victims  are from left Brandon Arjoon, Jason O'Brian ,  Jagdesh Jude Jaikaran, Jerry O'Brian , Linton Manohar and missing from photo Ricky Rambharose.

Kidnappers train their guns at five of the six T&T fishermen who were reportedly abducted and taken to Venezuela earlier this week. The victims are from left Brandon Arjoon, Jason O'Brian , Jagdesh Jude Jaikaran, Jerry O'Brian , Linton Manohar and missing from photo Ricky Rambharose.

Gov­ern­ment has sought help from In­ter­pol, the in­ter­na­tion­al po­lice or­gan­i­sa­tion, with the al­leged kid­nap­ping of six T&T na­tion­als in Venezuela.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said in a me­dia re­lease that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion “is at a very sen­si­tive stage. Ac­cord­ing­ly, de­tails and spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the cir­cum­stances of this mat­ter can­not be pro­vid­ed at this time.”

There were re­ports said that one of the fish­er­men de­tained last Sun­day had been re­leased af­ter a ran­som had been paid.

The men, iden­ti­fied as Jude Jaikaran, 16; broth­ers Ja­son, 38, and Jer­ry O’Bri­an, 36; Ricky Ramb­harose, 35; Bran­don Ar­joon, 29; and Lin­ton Manohar, 36, were seen in a pho­to­graph that has been wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia sit­ting on the floor sur­round­ed by men point­ing ma­chine-guns at them. The pho­to­graph had been sent to the men’s rel­a­tives on Mon­day.

Ear­li­er this week, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the kid­nap­ping of the six fish­er­men al­leged­ly by Venezue­lan na­tion­als but would not com­ment on whether a US$200,000 ran­som had been de­mand­ed.

“We at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice are do­ing all that is re­quired. It is a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. Ini­tial­ly, re­ports are that they (those kid­napped) were ac­tu­al­ly out­side of our wa­ters when it is they were ac­tu­al­ly held by these in­di­vid­u­als,” he said.

The kid­nap­pers had re­port­ed­ly giv­en the men’s rel­a­tives un­til Fri­day to pay the ran­som or the hands of the fish­er­men would be chopped off.

The Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, which said in the state­ment that it had no ju­ris­dic­tion, urged com­men­ta­tors to be “cau­tious in their ut­ter­ances and con­dem­na­tion of how the mat­ter is be­ing han­dled and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mat­ter as they are not privy to the facts and in­tel­li­gence of this mat­ter.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said cit­i­zens “should be aware of the risks of leav­ing our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and ven­tur­ing in­to the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of oth­er coun­tries where we have no ju­ris­dic­tion.

“The in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing this mat­ter is that the Trinida­di­an in­di­vid­u­als in­volved were ab­duct­ed in Venezue­lan riv­er trib­u­taries with­in the main­land of Venezuela,” he said.


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