Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, claims that a for­mer US in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer be­lieves the Unit­ed States is send­ing a strong mes­sage to Venezuela not to in­ter­fere with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On his week­ly tele­vi­sion pro­gramme, Ca­bel­lo re­ferred to com­ments made by a for­mer US Naval In­tel­li­gence Of­fi­cer, sug­gest­ing that the US could come to T&T’s aid in the event of any mil­i­tary con­flict be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Venezuela.

He said the mil­i­tary ex­pert be­lieves that the Amer­i­cans are is­su­ing a strong warn­ing to Ca­bel­lo and oth­er se­nior Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials not to in­ter­fere with T&T.

“Do you know that some­thing is cook­ing be­hind your back in Venezuela? To­day Jesús Romero, Com­man­der of In­tel­li­gence of the US South­ern Com­mand, tells us about the sce­nar­ios… they are all ex­perts in chaos, in ly­ing, they are all swindlers,” Ca­bel­lo said.

Dur­ing his week­ly TV pro­gramme, Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, on Wednes­day night, Ca­bel­lo played an ex­cerpt of a record­ing from an in­ter­view with for­mer US Naval In­tel­li­gence Com­man­der Jesús Romero.

The ex­cerpt was tak­en from an in­ter­view Romero gave ear­li­er this week to Voz News, a con­ser­v­a­tive Span­ish-lan­guage me­dia out­let based in the Unit­ed States.

On Tues­day, Voz News an­chor and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Ka­ri­na Ya­por, in­ter­viewed Romero on the news­cast about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the ad­min­is­tra­tion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump might ini­ti­ate at­tacks with­in Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry to com­bat the Tren de Aragua and the Car­tel of the Suns.

Romero ex­plained that the al­leged re­cent ship­ment of US air­craft to Trinidad and To­ba­go was a di­rect re­sponse to threats made by the Venezue­lan regime.

“The plane that flew from the Unit­ed States to Trinidad and To­ba­go re­sponds di­rect­ly to the Car­tels of the Suns’ threats, which had sig­nalled to the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T that if they con­tin­ued sup­port­ing the Amer­i­cans in at­tack­ing Venezuela, they (Trinidad and To­ba­go) were go­ing to find them­selves in a very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion,” Romero said in Span­ish dur­ing the ex­cerpt played by Ca­bel­lo.

In an­oth­er re­cent in­ter­view, Romero re­ferred to re­cent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed videos show­ing Venezue­lan mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es on Patos Is­land—a small is­land lo­cat­ed be­tween Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go. The ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by mem­bers of the Bo­li­var­i­an Army of Venezuela, in­volv­ing a ZU-23 an­ti-air­craft can­non fired from the deck of a Frailes-class ves­sel.

“It seems to me that they (the Amer­i­cans) sent the plane to T&T, which was a mes­sage to Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo and Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Vladimir Padri­no López,” Romero said.

Romero not­ed that the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean is among the largest since the Sec­ond World War and said it is ev­i­dent that the Unit­ed States is like­ly to take se­ri­ous ac­tion due to the suf­fer­ing of Venezue­lans.

“I think we all know that Venezue­lans have suf­fered tremen­dous­ly un­der this regime, and I think the most im­por­tant thing is that they may have for­got­ten to re­port on the hun­dreds of deaths and the hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions that have pend­ing cas­es be­fore the Unit­ed Na­tions.”