An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter eight days in cap­tiv­i­ty, kid­nap vic­tim Jankie Satie Karim is now back home safe and sound.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro made the dis­clo­sure to re­porters late last night, af­ter Karim was res­cued dur­ing a po­lice op­er­a­tion.

Gue­var­ro said al­though “vis­i­bly shak­en,” the 44-year-old vic­tim, who was res­cued around 6.30 pm off the To­co Main Road in Ram­panal­gas and tak­en to hos­pi­tal for med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion, was “oth­er­wise okay.”

How­ev­er, one of her ab­duc­tors was re­port­ed­ly killed in a con­fronta­tion with po­lice.

Gue­var­ro ex­plained that based on in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence re­ceived, of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the Mul­ti-Op­tion­al Po­lice Sec­tion, the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit and the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit (AKU), were able to lo­cate the vic­tim, who was ab­duct­ed on Ju­ly 13.

“An in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion went in­to play and as the of­fi­cers would have ap­proached the house (where the vic­tim was be­ing held), the male sus­pect would have held Ms Karim hostage, armed with a firearm … and sad­ly, po­lice of­fi­cers had to use the Use of Force Pol­i­cy and he was wound­ed and tak­en to hos­pi­tal, where he suc­cumbed sub­se­quent­ly,” Gue­var­ro told re­porters gath­ered near the house where Karim was lo­cat­ed.

“The vic­tim, Ms Karim, was al­so tak­en to hos­pi­tal where she was med­ical­ly ex­am­ined and she is now re­unit­ed with her fam­i­ly.”

The top cop added that a fe­male sus­pect was al­so tak­en in­to cus­tody but did not re­veal the iden­ti­ty of ei­ther sus­pects.

“I would like to urge the mem­bers of the pub­lic to con­tin­ue to part­ner with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and share in­for­ma­tion that is of use to us,” He con­firmed that Karim’s ab­duc­tion was linked to last Fri­day’s de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency, which he said was aimed at dis­man­tling a crime syn­di­cate.

“These are the crim­i­nal gangs that have amal­ga­mat­ed them­selves in­to this syn­di­cate and were us­ing crimes such as rob­beries, ex­tor­tion and, in this case, kid­nap­ping for the pur­pose of get­ting mon­ey so that they could fu­el their ram­pant at­tack on the good cit­i­zens of this coun­try,” the po­lice chief said.

“This is a sce­nario that could have played out to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent had they (crim­i­nals) or had he (the de­ceased sus­pect) de­cid­ed to give him­self up, as I begged the mem­bers of the crim­i­nal net­works, when con­front­ed by my of­fi­cers, please sur­ren­der and do not en­gage my of­fi­cers, they are high­ly trained.”

Nonethe­less, Gue­var­ro ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of the de­ceased.

Yes­ter­day’s op­er­a­tion was spear­head­ed by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Richard Smith, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Win­ston Maraj and Su­per­in­ten­dent An­der­son Pa­ri­man.

Gue­var­ro said “over­whelm­ing” in­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic led to the suc­cess­ful res­cue of the hostage.

Karim was grabbed her from her hus­band’s white Toy­ota Hilux ve­hi­cle by three masked gun­men, less than a minute away from her An­poo Street, Spring Vil­lage, Val­sayn home.