Po­lice of­fi­cers, along with per­son­nel from the Coast Guard and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners, have in­ter­cept­ed a fish­ing ves­sel com­ing from Venezuela to Trinidad trans­port­ing 29 mil­lion dol­lars worth of high-grade cannabis.

The in­ter­cep­tion and seizure, the TTPS said, oc­curred in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day and came 11 days af­ter the Unit­ed States Navy car­ried out an airstrike in the south­ern Caribbean on a boat from Venezuela, killing all 11 peo­ple on the ves­sel. US of­fi­cials claimed that the ves­sel was a drug-smug­gling boat trans­port­ing il­le­gal drugs bound for Amer­i­ca.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said on Thurs­day (Sep­tem­ber 11), a spe­cialised unit of the TTPS re­ceived cred­i­ble in­tel­li­gence in­di­cat­ing that a large con­sign­ment of high-grade Colom­bian “Creepy” mar­i­jua­na was be­ing trans­port­ed from Venezuela to Trinidad aboard a fish­ing ves­sel.

Po­lice said when the in­for­ma­tion was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts, the spe­cialised TTPS unit im­me­di­ate­ly co­or­di­nat­ed with the TTCG, alert­ing them to the move­ment of the ves­sel.

The TTPS did not re­veal if the US was the “in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner” it worked with to car­ry out the in­ter­cep­tion.

The state­ment said around 3 am yes­ter­day, the Coast Guard pa­trols in­ter­cept­ed a pirogue off the Point Fortin coast­line. Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, the oc­cu­pants of the ves­sel at­tempt­ed to evade cap­ture, throw­ing sev­er­al large bags over­board.

Po­lice said three in­di­vid­u­als jumped in­to the sea, while two oth­ers, a Trinida­di­an and a Latin Amer­i­can, re­mained on board and were de­tained.

Of­fi­cers seized nine cro­cus bags con­tain­ing 268 brown-wrapped pack­ets of cannabis from the sea around the ves­sel. The seized nar­cotics have an es­ti­mat­ed com­bined weight of 268 kilo­grams and a street val­ue of $29,412,196. The de­tained sus­pects, along with the ves­sel and the ex­hibits, were tak­en to Staubles Bay and hand­ed over to po­lice of­fi­cers for fur­ther en­quiries.

Po­lice said the search con­tin­ues for the three fugi­tives who re­main at large.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro com­mend­ed the law en­force­ment of­fi­cers in­volved in the op­er­a­tion.

The state­ment quot­ed the Com­mis­sion­er as say­ing: “This suc­cess­ful in­ter­cep­tion high­lights the strength of the TTPS’s in­tel­li­gence ap­pa­ra­tus and the ef­fec­tive­ness of pre­ci­sion polic­ing when sup­port­ed by our re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.”

He added: “The il­le­gal nar­cotics trade is a transna­tion­al threat that un­der­mines se­cu­ri­ty across the en­tire Caribbean, and no sin­gle man, nor is­land, can com­bat it alone. This op­er­a­tion demon­strates the re­sults we can achieve when agen­cies work to­geth­er and share in­tel­li­gence. We will con­tin­ue to build on these re­la­tion­ships to pro­tect our bor­ders and dis­man­tle crim­i­nal net­works that are the nu­cle­us of most of the se­ri­ous vi­o­lence and crime we face in our coun­try. To­geth­er we will safe­guard the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Po­lice said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

In Au­gust, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers re­vealed the ar­rest of sev­er­al Trinida­di­an men and a Venezue­lan na­tion­al at sea, who were al­leged­ly on their way to col­lect a ship­ment of guns and il­le­gal drugs bound for this coun­try.

That in­ci­dent, which oc­curred around Au­gust 13 or 14, has been linked to the broad­er transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works cur­rent­ly un­der scruti­ny as part of the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).