Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is pleased fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s US mil­i­tary strike that sank a drug-car­ry­ing ves­sel leav­ing Venezue­lan wa­ters.

The rev­e­la­tion was first made by US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dur­ing an in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists in Wash­ing­ton.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio sub­se­quent­ly said on X that the ves­sel was be­ing op­er­at­ed by a “des­ig­nat­ed nar­co-ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion” and that the op­er­a­tion was a lethal strike. In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Ru­bio said the in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion of the drugs may have been T&T.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia on the strike yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar backed the US ac­tion, say­ing, “I, along with most of the coun­try, am hap­py that the US naval de­ploy­ment is hav­ing suc­cess in their mis­sion. The US gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly said that go­ing af­ter the drug car­tels was their ob­jec­tive and they have be­gun to de­liv­er. Il­le­gal­ly traf­ficked drugs and arms have caused death and de­struc­tion in our so­ci­ety over the last twen­ty-five years.”

She said the coun­try has been rav­aged by bloody vi­o­lence and ad­dic­tion be­cause of the greed of the car­tels.

“The slaugh­ter of our peo­ple is fu­elled by evil car­tel traf­fick­ers. The pain and suf­fer­ing the car­tels have in­flict­ed on our na­tion is im­mense. I have no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers, the US mil­i­tary should kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added that the re­stric­tion of il­le­gal guns, drugs and hu­man traf­fick­ing will de­crease vi­o­lence in the re­gion and, in par­tic­u­lar, in this coun­try.

“May God bless and pro­tect the mem­bers of the US mil­i­tary who are en­gaged in the drug in­ter­dic­tion mis­sion. Their ef­forts will save many lives in our coun­try and the re­gion,” she said.

Speak­ing about the ex­er­cise be­fore de­part­ing for Mex­i­co yes­ter­day, Ru­bio de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as a “coun­ter­drug” mis­sion aimed at desta­bil­is­ing car­tels op­er­at­ing with im­puni­ty.

“These par­tic­u­lar drugs were prob­a­bly head­ed to Trinidad or some oth­er coun­try in the Caribbean, at which point they just con­tribute to the in­sta­bil­i­ty these coun­tries are fac­ing,” Ru­bio said.

He added that Pres­i­dent Trump was com­mit­ted to us­ing “the full pow­er of Amer­i­ca and the full might of the Unit­ed States to take on and erad­i­cate these drug car­tels, no mat­ter where they’re op­er­at­ing from and no mat­ter how long they’ve been able to act with im­puni­ty.”

Ru­bio stressed the op­er­a­tion is part of a broad­er ef­fort to pro­tect US na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and se­cure the re­gion from il­le­gal drugs and as­so­ci­at­ed vi­o­lence.

The US had re­cent­ly de­ployed five US Navy ves­sels to the Caribbean, af­ter an­nounc­ing plans to boost its mar­itime force in the wa­ters off Venezuela to com­bat threats from Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels.