Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary is ex­pect­ed to in­ten­si­fy ex­er­cis­es in T&T.

He made the com­ment to the UK’s Fi­nan­cial Times pub­li­ca­tion. The ar­ti­cle was shared yes­ter­day.

In the ar­ti­cle, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Je­re­mie is quot­ed as say­ing that the US 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) would in­ten­si­fy ex­er­cis­es “in the com­ing days.”

The MEU came to this coun­try along with the USS Grave­ly, a war­ship, which was docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain from Oc­to­ber 26 to 31.

The pur­pose of the vis­it was for joint mil­i­tary train­ing with the De­fence Force.

How­ev­er, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al told the Fi­nan­cial Times, “We are en­gaged with our friends in the north in a se­ries of ex­er­cis­es.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle, Je­re­mie did not say if the ex­er­cis­es had al­ready start­ed and of­fered no ex­pla­na­tion as to what type of ex­er­cis­es were be­ing con­duct­ed.

But while he did not re­veal de­tails about the ex­er­cis­es, Je­re­mie not­ed, “We have a prob­lem with gangs, drugs and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing gang-re­lat­ed homi­cides and so on, and those things are di­rect­ly linked to the flow of drugs and am­mu­ni­tion from Venezuela,” and was “com­fort­able” with an al­ly pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge via What­sApp yes­ter­day on the mat­ter, but there was no re­sponse.

Mean­while, Las Cuevas fish­er­men and res­i­dents called on the au­thor­i­ties to con­firm whether or not US mil­i­tary Un­manned Aer­i­al Ve­hi­cles (UAVs) or drones are be­ing flown in T&T air­space over the North Coast, as res­i­dents claim to have seen lights be­long­ing to drones sev­er­al nights over the past two weeks.

One res­i­dent, David Nor­ie­ga, said while he could not con­firm whether the drones were mil­i­tary in ori­gin, the de­vices were vis­i­ble from his van­tage point. He said such sight­ings were un­set­tling, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en re­cent re­ports of mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ties in the south­ern Caribbean.

“When I walk­ing the streets at night, I see them fly­ing all over the place.

“I’ve seen them, many times be­fore; they come and go as far as Mara­cas. I don’t know their pur­pose or what they’ve been do­ing, but it’s def­i­nite­ly a drone.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, who asked not to be named, said he saw a grey air­craft just af­ter sun­set near the sea­side last week and was “in awe” over its speed and shape.

“From my van­tage point by the hill there, I saw it pass­ing the wa­ter. It wasn’t too small, but then again it was a good dis­tance away.

“I was sur­prised when I saw it be­cause I know we don’t re­al­ly see that kind of thing fly­ing here... peo­ple will come and do their lit­tle drone pho­tog­ra­phy and thing with a small drone, but I don’t know what that was or where it came from.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Gen­er­al Atom­ics Aero­nau­ti­cal Sys­tems (GA-ASI) web­site, which man­u­fac­tures US mil­i­tary drones, the MQ-9A Reaper has a max­i­mum flight al­ti­tude of 50,000 feet, while the MQ-1 Preda­tor—an old­er mod­el—has a max­i­mum flight al­ti­tude of 25,000 feet.

On No­vem­ber 9, a pub­lished re­port claimed that the po­si­tions of MQ-9A Reaper drones were be­lieved to have trav­elled with­in T&T air­space and were ap­proach­ing the coun­try’s bor­der with Venezuela.

Nor­ie­ga said that while the pos­si­bil­i­ty of US mil­i­tary drones be­ing flown over the com­mu­ni­ty close enough to see was un­set­tling, he was not par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that any con­flict was im­mi­nent.

“I am con­cerned, but I don’t think it will es­ca­late any kind of war or any­thing.”

De­spite this, one Las Cuevas fish­er­man said that while he did not see any drones, he was un­set­tled by the on­go­ing mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the ar­rival of the US Navy air­craft car­ri­er, the USS Ger­ald R Ford, ear­li­er this week.

The fish­er­man, who asked not to be named, urged the Gov­ern­ment to come for­ward and ex­plain whether T&T would be part of any mil­i­tary con­flict.

“We need a prop­er an­swer on this, be­cause if any­thing goes wrong or some­body de­cides to drop a bomb, we are the first to be af­fect­ed. Peo­ple mak­ing de­ci­sions, and we have to stand up and just take that? Non­sense.”

He not­ed that since the US mil­i­tary be­gan tar­get­ing al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers, the zone of ac­tiv­i­ty for fish­er­folk on the North Coast has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ed, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the sus­pect­ed deaths of Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo in Oc­to­ber.

The fish­er­man felt the US strikes were “in­dis­crim­i­nate”, but ac­knowl­edged that some fish­er­men, out of des­per­a­tion, may be lured in­to trans­port­ing drugs be­cause of how lu­cra­tive it was.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, one De­fence Force source con­firmed that nei­ther he nor any oth­er of­fi­cials re­ceived brief­in­gs on the ar­rival of the USS Ger­ald Ford, but sus­pect­ed that this may hap­pen on Fri­day, when most high-lev­el brief­in­gs were held.