NGO official confirms two Trinidadians among six killed in US strike near Venezuela

Gary Aboud, secretary of the non-governmental organisation Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, confirmed Thursday that two Trinidad and Tobago nationals were among six people killed following a United States military airstrike on a small vessel in international waters near the coast of Venezuela earlier this week.

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“We would like to offer our condolences to the families, friends, children, wives of the deceased. Very, very sorry that they were murdered like this. I am very very sorry,” Aboud said on a radio broadcast Thursday with regards to the killings of Richie Samaroo and Chad “Charpo” Joseph.

Aboud said the killings have left local fisherfolk afraid to go out to sea. “People are terrified at the risk of being killed at sea. Personally I am very upset with our national position of bringing American warships and allowing them to bypass the judicial process.

“We have law and order. We are a civilised nation. Yet we have adopted and given blessing to warmongering murderers to come into our territory and kill people outside of the judicial process.

“I strongly advise fishermen not to go further than a quarter of a mile, half a mile from the shoreline,” Aboud said, adding that the fishes being sought can be caught near the shores. “It is very dangerous to be offshore as you can be killed at anytime,” he said.

The Trinidad and Tobago government and the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service have made no official comment regarding the deaths of the two nationals, but Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has publicly given support to the United States’ war on narcotics in the Caribbean.

Last month, President Donald Trump ramped up U.S. military presence in the Caribbean Sea, ordering an amphibious squadron to the southern Caribbean as part of efforts to address threats from Latin American drug cartels. A nuclear-powered attack submarine, additional P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, several destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser have also been allocated to U.S. Southern Command as part of the mission.

The United States military has carried out four deadly airstrikes in Caribbean waters over the past few weeks against what Washington alleges are Caracas-backed drug traffickers. The Venezuelan government denies the charge, accusing the administration of being a threat to the peace and security of the whole region.

Persad Bissessar has said she is “happy that the US naval deployment is having success in their mission,” and that “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”.

In the latest U.S. strike, President Trump said it targeted a vessel allegedly linked to narcotics trafficking and terrorist networks transiting through the Caribbean. It was the fifth U.S. “kinetic strike” in the region since the deployment of military assets under the administration’s anti-narcotics campaign. In total, 27 people have been killed in five similar operations, which Washington says are aimed at dismantling drug routes linked to Venezuela.

Relatives of the two Trinidadians have condemned the attack, calling it “inhumane” and “unjustified.” Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, said her son was not involved in drugs and described his death as “wrong and cruel. “The sea law is they supposed to stop the boat and intercept it, not blow it up like that,” Burnley told a local media outlet, while her son’s grandmother, Christine Clement, said he had been living in Venezuela for the past three months and had previously survived another attack while trying to return home by sea.

Aboud urged that the prime minister be questioned before the International Criminal Court over the matter. “What our Right Honourable Prime Minister has done should be questioned at the International Criminal Court because we are a country with courts and if we have a problem with the way the judiciary is functioning we should improve it.

“We have a Coast Guard…(and if) they don’t have radars, we should get radars, but killing our boys at sea, murdering them, there are about 20 commodity items that Trinidad imports from Venezuela,” he told radio listeners.

He listed those items and described broader cross-border movement and trade. “It is very common that many of our boys find it lucrative to run over (to Venezuela) and bring substances. There is also trafficking with the Venezuelans that work here , come and go regularly for funerals, weddings or they just go home after working here for a year or two.

“So the idea of killing them, certainly there is a small percentage of the American import of cocaine and narcotics that come through the Caribbean and the United nations has documentation that states eight per cent of it travels through the Eastern Caribbean territories, but 92 per cent travel through Central America,” Aboud added.