PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - A social activist wants Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Police Commissioner, Allister Guevarro, to provide details regarding the series of United States military strikes in the Caribbean that reportedly killed more than 60 people, including two Trinidad and Tobago nationals.
One of the vessels blown up by the US military, which it labelled a s a drug smuggling boat.Vishal Persad, who is also a blogger, Tuesday filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar, her CARICOM and Foreign Affairs Minister, Sean Sobers and the police commissioner.
Persad, through his attorneys Keron Ramkhalwhan and Anwar Hosein, is demanding the release of reports, meeting records, and legal opinions relating to the strikes, which began September 2 under orders from United States President Donald Trump.
The government has been given a December 4 deadline for a response.
In recent weeks, the United States military has been bombing vessels in the international waters claiming that the occupants were drug traffickers without offering any evidence of such activity. Venezuela has said that the strikes are part of a wider plan by the Trump administration to remove the Nicolas Maduro government from office.
The United Nations UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also strongly condemned airstrikes carried out by the United States against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Volker Türk said in a statement that the strikes “violate international human rights law”, demanding that they be stopped immediately.
Among those reportedly killed are two Trinidad and Tobago nationals, but Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar has reiterated her full support for Washington’s move to violently kill drug traffickers.
In his request, Persad refers to statements by the prime minister who has said that “all drug traffickers should be killed violently”.
According to the letter, at the UN General Assembly in September, Persad-Bissessar said the US military’s presence in the southern Caribbean “has been very effective in inhibiting the innumerable activities of drug cartels” and voiced support for a US-led regional security alliance announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
It further noted that Sobers later confirmed that the US government shared information about the strikes, which he said occurred in international waters, but he declined to disclose coordinates.
Persad’s FOIA request seeks, among other records, the names of those killed, the exact location of the October 14 strike that allegedly claimed two Trinidadian lives, and confirmation of whether US agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are operating in Trinidad and Tobago.
In the letter, the blogger argues that Trinidad and Tobago’s endorsement of the US strikes “contravenes both domestic and international legal frameworks designed to uphold due process and protect individual rights,” citing also section 4 of the Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“No government, however powerful or allied, ought to endorse or permit the unlawful summary execution of persons on the high seas or in international waters.
“To do so is to stray from the rule of law and the principles of human dignity that bind civilized nations. Man is not God, and any descent into a world where men assume the roles of judge, jury, and executioner must be rejected and condemned by all who value justice, humanity, and the sanctity of life.
“These actions signal that the country’s leadership has come to accept the summary executions of so-called ‘criminals’ as a legitimate tool of crime reduction. When governments begin to sanctify killings as policy, civilisation itself trembles,” Persad said.
He said that the sea, vast and merciless, must not become the “graveyard of justice” and that Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s statements “reflect a troubling national ethos, one that now appears to tolerate, and even encourage, the taking of life in the name of order.
“This is the lazy posture of a government that has lost faith in the rule of law and the institutions of justice.
“First came the declaration of a state of emergency; then an exponential rise in police killings 17; a Commissioner of Police adorning the Punisher symbol to glorify vengeances rather than justice; and now, an open endorsement to kill/execute persons on the high seas/international waters,” the letter added.
Ayana Roberts, the common-law wife of Chad Joseph, one of the two Trinidadians allegedly killed during the US airstrikes, filed the missing person’s report to the police on November 1, but declined to give a statement on the advice of the family’s attorney.
A second report was made by Rishi Samaroo’s sister, Sallycar Korasingh, on November 2.
Meanwhile, Maduro has accused Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar of doing ‘great harm’ within the region and destroying historic bonds between the two countries.
Speaking during an interview with Venezuelan media VTV, Maduro spoke of ““the irresponsible and war-mongering Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, who is determined to destroy the historic bonds of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace between Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela”.
“This Prime Minister has done great harm, deliberately, because she responds more to the interests of the US far right than to the interests of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. That’s the truth. With the truth, I neither offend nor fear.”
