Rhon­dor Dowlat

Glo­ria Charles, moth­er of one of the five T&T de­tainees locked up in a Venezue­lan jail, said that she will be tak­ing her son for med­ical treat­ment as soon as he re­turns as he de­vel­oped a kid­ney in­fec­tion dur­ing his two years and sev­en months de­ten­tion.

On Sat­ur­day, a Venezue­lan judge found the men guilty on es­pi­onage charges but or­dered their re­lease based on time served.

"I can't wait to see my son but he is very sick. The doc­tors there were on­ly tak­ing his pres­sure, he is not be­ing treat­ed for the kid­ney prob­lem he de­vel­oped while there and the bad toothache he is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing," Glo­ria said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. The wives of the oth­er men al­so hoped for their speedy re­turn home.

Charles along with Do­minic Piti­lal, Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bat­ters­by and Leslie Daise­ly, were de­tained in Venezuela on March 19 2014 and lat­er charged with ter­ror­ism of­fences. The men claimed the had gone to Cara­cas to seek visas for the an­nu­al Ha­jj pil­grim­age, in Sau­di Ara­bia.

At re­cent talks in May be­tween T&T and Venezue­lan lead­ers, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials asked that the mat­ter be ex­pe­dit­ed dur­ing dis­cus­sions on repa­tri­a­tion of peo­ple de­tained in each coun­try on im­mi­gra­tion is­sues.

Soon af­ter the talks, the ter­ror­ism charges against the five were dropped but re­placed with charges con­cern­ing in­tent to com­mit es­pi­onage and to com­ment a crime.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon on Sat­ur­day con­firmed that the five T&T men are be­ing re­leased and sent home af­ter serv­ing time. Dil­lon via a state­ment said the fi­nal hear­ing end­ed with a ver­dict and sen­tenc­ing at 1.30 am on Sat­ur­day.

"The judge passed a guilty ver­dict and a sen­tence of two years, six months and 25 days was giv­en." Dil­lon said that was equiv­a­lent to the length of time they had been de­tained.

"The judge ruled that they have al­ready served time and are now free. As such they will now be processed and de­port­ed to Pi­ar­co at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty," Dil­lon re­port­ed­ly said.