Two Venezue­lan ves­sels car­ry­ing cop­per and with a crew of eight sank off Ce­dros on Fri­day while be­ing towed to the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay, Ch­aguara­mas base.

The men, all Venezue­lans, some of whom had to be res­cued from the wa­ter when the ves­sels sub­merged were de­tained at Staubles Bay up to Sun­day evening.

The in­ci­dent has raised sev­er­al ques­tions, in­clud­ing why the Coast Guard did not al­low the ves­sels named Frilay and El Cu­fi to dock at the Ce­dros port when the nec­es­sary pa­per­work was done and the prop­er pro­ce­dure was fol­lowed.

Why were the ves­sels be­ing tak­en to Staubles Bay? How did the ves­sels, which left Tu­cu­pi­ta on Thurs­day with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 tonnes of cop­per, sink?

John Williams, own­er of ABC Trinidad Cus­toms Bro­ker­age Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed is de­mand­ing an­swers.

He said his com­pa­ny en­sured that the nec­es­sary 24-hour ad­vance no­tice of the ves­sels’ ar­rival and oth­er rel­e­vant de­tails were pro­vid­ed to the Coast Guard, Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment and Cus­toms and Ex­cise.

How­ev­er, around 8 am on Fri­day the ves­sels were just a stone’s throw away from the Ce­dros jet­ty when they were in­ter­cept­ed by the Coast Guard.

Williams said they were ini­tial­ly told the ves­sels were de­tained be­cause the port clear­ance doc­u­ments from Venezuela did not spec­i­fy that car­go was on board.

How­ev­er, he said a man­i­fest was sent to the Coast Guard and Cus­toms via email in­form­ing them that the ves­sels were trans­port­ing cop­per.

“The Coast Guard is claim­ing they nev­er re­ceived it is a lie be­cause Cus­toms re­ceived it. It is not even the Coast Guard’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­ter­mine whether a ves­sel has car­go on it or not—that is the job of Cus­toms and Ex­cise.

They al­so have a Ma­rine In­ter­dic­tion Unit that deals with that. The Coast Guard’s job is to main­tain and se­cure the mar­itime bor­ders.

“The prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion was pro­vid­ed, is not that they tried to come in­to the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, they fol­lowed the nec­es­sary process and pro­ce­dures re­quired to have ves­sel en­ter T&T for pur­pose of trans­act­ing busi­ness,” charged Williams.

He fur­ther claimed that the Coast Guard act­ed with­out in­form­ing the Cus­toms and Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials.

Williams said a coast guard of­fi­cer said they fol­low­ing in­struc­tions from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to in­ter­cept any ves­sels com­ing from Venezuela.

“He (the of­fi­cer) said these peo­ple (Venezue­lans) bring­ing in guns and drugs, but noth­ing like that were found on the ves­sels or the crew. The ves­sel was not red-flagged by Im­mi­gra­tion or Cus­toms stat­ing can­not come in­to the coun­try.

In my mind this is a breach in pro­to­col, it tells me that any boat or ship can be stopped by Coast Guard and the crew could get beat­en or as­sault­ed. They can­not put these men in the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre or de­tain them be­cause they did noth­ing wrong.”

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that nei­ther Williams nor at­tor­ney Kel­ston Pope were al­lowed to speak with the Venezue­lans at Staubles Bay.

Pope com­plained that he wait­ed three hours be­fore be­ing in­formed that he will not be al­lowed to speak with the men. Williams said the men came here to sell the cop­per to buy food and oth­er ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties to take back to their fam­i­lies but in­stead lost their car­go, boats and free­dom.

Call­ing on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to make clear the pol­i­cy for Venezue­lan ves­sels en­ter­ing T&T, Williams said the ship­ping and cus­toms fra­ter­ni­ty was not in­formed of any change in the pro­ce­dure.

De­scrib­ing the treat­ment met­ed out to the Venezue­lans as in­hu­mane and un­fair, he said: “You can­not be in­hu­mane to peo­ple and beat peo­ple for no rea­son.

“This is not the first time this has hap­pened. With­in re­cent times they have been sub­ject­ing these Venezue­lan ves­sels to that kind of treat­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the Coast Guard.”

Up to press time Guardian Me­dia re­ceived no re­sponse from the Coast Guard on the mat­ter.