RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Coast Guard of­fi­cers were yes­ter­day ac­cused of chok­ing and beat­ing two fish­er­men af­ter they in­ter­cept­ed a boat which they claim was re­turn­ing home from Venezue­lan wa­ters.

Rel­a­tives of the two men ar­gue that the boat was in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and were in­no­cent.

Pres­i­dent of the Ica­cos Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Es­ook Ali claimed his grand­son was choked by a Coast Guard of­fi­cer.

“It was just like what hap­pened in the States when my son in­ter­vened, they hold him and slam him on one side,” Ali said.

While he had no prob­lem with the T&T Coast Guard pro­tect­ing the wa­ters, Ali said he was against the ar­rest and ha­rass­ment of in­no­cent fish­er­men who nev­er crossed to the Venezue­lan bor­der.

“It’s over 10 fish­er­men face this kind of treat­ment. They have beat­en peo­ple mer­ci­less­ly and tak­en away their goods. I agree that if some­one does some­thing il­le­gal­ly, then the full force of the law should be ap­plied but if you catch some­body fish­ing why you treat­ing them this way,” Ali said.

He added, “We have peo­ple do­ing il­le­gal things but not every­body do­ing this.”

Ali said he had hired an at­tor­ney and planned to take le­gal ac­tion.

How­ev­er, the T&T Coast Guard in a state­ment, de­nied that any­one was beat­en.

Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer Khadi­ja Lamy said on Thurs­day while con­duct­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols, the Coast Guard in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel named ‘FV’ZAFRUL­LA III’ south-west of Ica­cos.

“The ves­sel had been ob­served ren­dezvous­ing with an­oth­er ves­sel across the bor­der from Trinidad in Venezue­lan wa­ters. FV’Zafrul­la III was stopped as they at­tempt­ed to re-en­ter Trinidad wa­ters. On­board were two male na­tion­als. Up­on search­ing the ves­sel, a large car­go of shrimp and fish was dis­cov­ered. The crew was in­ter­viewed and it was re­vealed that the con­tents of the ves­sel were pur­chased from Venezue­lans,” Lamy said.

The ves­sel was de­tained and its crew and car­go were hand­ed over to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the po­lice, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

Lamy said the Coast Guard con­tin­ues to pro­vide bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices in the face of the threat of COVID-19 through the con­duct of mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty pa­trols with­in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.