DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts are push­ing back against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that an un­flagged ves­sel can be treat­ed as a pi­rate ship and at­tacked in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, ar­gu­ing that her ex­pla­na­tion does not align with mar­itime or in­ter­na­tion­al law.

For­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Coastal Sur­veil­lance Radar Cen­tre and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) po­lit­i­cal leader, re­tired Coast Guard com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al, said that the Prime Min­is­ter’s claim is legal­ly un­sound. He said fla­g­less ves­sels are clas­si­fied as state­less, not pi­rates, and can­not be con­sid­ered law­ful tar­gets.

His com­ments fol­low re­newed ques­tions about the Sep­tem­ber 2 strike near Trinidad and To­ba­go’s wa­ters, now un­der scruti­ny for al­leged­ly killing two sur­vivors in a sec­ond hit. Speak­ing out­side Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the in­ci­dent “had lit­tle to do with Trinidad and To­ba­go” and sug­gest­ed the un­reg­is­tered ves­sel may have been viewed as car­ry­ing pi­rates. Din­di­al dis­missed that in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

“Even if you want to say the first strike was jus­ti­fied un­der the US ju­ris­dic­tion by the US de­ter­min­ing that these are for­eign ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and the first strike was done, the sec­ond strike can­not be jus­ti­fied if you’re us­ing the law of Gene­va Con­ven­tion be­cause you have killed sur­vivors. So, any way you look at it, it’s mur­der, mur­der on the high seas. And not hav­ing a flag does not al­low you to do that.”

Din­di­al warned that T&T could be ex­posed to in­ter­na­tion­al li­a­bil­i­ty if the strike in­volved sup­port from in­side lo­cal ter­ri­to­r­i­al space, in­clud­ing radar il­lu­mi­na­tion or T&T per­son­nel em­bed­ded with US units.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith al­so crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­marks, stress­ing that a fla­g­less ves­sel can­not sim­ply be “neu­tralised”. He said any sec­ond strike on in­di­vid­u­als no longer pos­ing a threat car­ries se­ri­ous le­gal con­se­quences.

“If you fire one shot and then, af­ter time pass­es, and then you see per­sons now there is no threat to you, they can­not es­cape, and then you fire it, now you start talk­ing war crime. And that is why the politi­cian said, ‘Well, I left the room, so I don’t know what hap­pened af­ter that. So, the dou­ble-tap sit­u­a­tion can have some very far-reach­ing ef­fects.”

Grif­fith added that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has at least been clear that T&T will not sup­port war crimes, al­low the US to use the coun­try as a launch point to at­tack Venezuela, or en­dorse ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions schol­ar Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan said the US strike near T&T’s wa­ters was “il­le­gal” un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law. He ar­gued the Prime Min­is­ter should adopt a firm moral stance giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the in­ci­dent. Bryan said her re­luc­tance to ad­dress ques­tions di­rect­ly, and past re­marks about “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly”, has cre­at­ed an ap­pear­ance of in­con­sis­ten­cy, adding that the on­ly cred­i­ble pos­ture now is a clear de­fence of the rule of law.

Radar can’t help solve kid­nap­pings

Mean­while, Din­di­al al­so chal­lenged Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s claim that the new­ly in­stalled US radar in To­ba­go could as­sist in lo­cat­ing kid­napped Monos Is­land cou­ple Der­rick and Clari­bel Tardieu.

“That radar, putting it blunt­ly, can­not help with re­cov­ery of kid­napped vic­tims be­cause the radar is an air sur­veil­lance radar, it’s a com­bat-ready radar, it’s bat­tle­field ready, it is a radar that is de­ployed in high­ly con­test­ed en­vi­ron­ments. It is a radar that is used by the US to ex­tend a range to see deep in­to Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry and to see out to the east of clan­des­tine air­craft that are com­ing over from ei­ther Rus­sia, or Chi­na, or the Mid­dle East, in or­der to sup­port the Venezue­lan regime, to sup­port their mil­i­tary,” he said.

Grif­fith de­scribed Alexan­der’s com­ments on the Tardieu case as “ir­re­spon­si­ble,” warn­ing that pub­lic dis­clo­sures could en­dan­ger the vic­tims. He re­ject­ed Alexan­der’s claims that pre­vi­ous sys­tems were in­ef­fec­tive, say­ing that dur­ing his term as po­lice com­mis­sion­er, all 12 kid­nap­ping cas­es were solved with vic­tims res­cued and ab­duc­tors de­tained.

Ef­forts to get a re­sponse from Alexan­der were un­suc­cess­ful.