RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers says Rishi Sama­roo and Chad ‘Char­po’ Joseph, two Trinidad and To­ba­go men whose rel­a­tives be­lieve were killed in a US airstrike, may not be dead but could be miss­ing.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Sobers said there is no ev­i­dence that Joseph and Sama­roo were killed, adding that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.

“They may very well be miss­ing. We don’t know them to be dead,” Sobers said. “We don’t know that they were the ac­tu­al per­sons on any boats that may have been de­stroyed. In the ab­sence of any ev­i­dence, the best course of ac­tion would be to go to the po­lice and file a miss­ing per­sons re­port.”

Last Wednes­day, Joseph’s rel­a­tives in Las Cuevas held a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for him and called on US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to stop killing in­no­cent peo­ple. Rel­a­tives said Joseph and Sama­roo were killed in a US airstrike on a sus­pect­ed drug-smug­gling boat in the wa­ters off Venezuela on Oc­to­ber 16. Joseph’s rel­a­tives claimed he was a fish­er­man who had been strand­ed in Venezuela for the last few months.

Yes­ter­day, when told that the fam­i­ly be­lieved the men were dead, Sobers said: “This is con­jec­ture and mis­in­for­ma­tion. We have made arrange­ments with the po­lice to try to lo­cate these in­di­vid­u­als.”

With in­creased re­gion­al ten­sions, Sobers al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about the diplo­mat­ic pres­ence in Venezuela. He said T&T main­tains a work­ing diplo­mat­ic con­tin­gent there and that all staff re­main in place.

“We have a diplo­mat­ic con­tin­gent in Venezuela. No­body has moved, no­body has run or gone any­where. Work is op­er­at­ing as nor­mal, and there are no is­sues,” he said. Sobers added that the coun­try does not cur­rent­ly have an am­bas­sador in Cara­cas, but the staff com­ple­ment con­sists of three diplo­mats from the cap­i­tal and five lo­cal staff.

The min­is­ter al­so spoke about T&T’s re­la­tions with Venezuela and his con­nec­tion to the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to this coun­try.

“We have ex­cel­lent re­la­tions with Venezuela. I have been in con­stant con­tact with the Am­bas­sador to Venezuela, Al­varo Sanchez Cordero. I call him by his first name be­cause we are very good friends. We have no is­sues with Venezuela,” Sobers said.

Re­gard­ing the USS Grave­ly, a US naval ship present in the re­gion, Sobers said there is no ver­i­fied in­for­ma­tion link­ing it to any strikes con­duct­ed by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I don’t know at all where you got the in­for­ma­tion that the USS Grave­ly was in­volved in any strikes with­in the south­ern Caribbean. That is be­yond me. I would cau­tion any­body from say­ing that un­less they have ev­i­dence,” he said.

Sobers con­firmed that Trinida­di­ans in Venezuela who wish to leave can ac­cess com­mer­cial flights.