JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two men be­lieved to have been killed in a US strike on a boat in the south­ern Caribbean are re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion from the State in re­la­tion to the in­ci­dent, which in­cludes de­tails from the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency (CIA) and Drug En­force­ment Agency (DEA).  

They al­so want the par­tic­u­lars of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s meet­ing with the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio in Sep­tem­ber.

In a 17-page let­ter, at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, who is rep­re­sent­ing blog­ger and so­cial ac­tivist Vishal Per­sad, wrote to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers, re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on eight items.  

The in­for­ma­tion be­ing re­quest­ed are: copies of all le­gal opin­ions pro­vid­ed to the three rel­a­tives on the mil­i­tary strikes in the Caribbean; copies of all min­utes and/or records of the meet­ing held on Sep­tem­ber 30 be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and US Sec­re­tary of State; copies of all min­utes and/or records of any meet­ing held be­tween Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Ru­bio on No­vem­ber 3; copies of all re­ports re­ceived from the Unit­ed Sates Gov­ern­ment rel­a­tive to the mil­i­tary strikes in the Caribbean that be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 2; the lo­ca­tion/co­or­di­nates (lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude) of the mil­i­tary strike that oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 14; the names of all peo­ple killed in the mil­i­tary strikes; records of whether in­di­vid­u­als as­signed to the CIA and DEA are cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing (con­duct­ing in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing op­er­a­tions or crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions) in the coun­try and un­der whose au­thor­i­ty.

Ramkhal­whan gave the three of­fi­cials un­til De­cem­ber 4 to re­spond to the re­quest in keep­ing with Sec­tion 15 of the FOIA, which man­dates a de­ci­sion with­in 30 days of sub­mis­sion.

On Oc­to­ber 30, Sobers con­firmed that au­thor­i­ties ob­tained the co­or­di­nates of Unit­ed States mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, which ver­i­fy that the strikes oc­curred in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters—out­side T&T’s Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ).

How­ev­er, he did not say whether the co­or­di­nates in­clude the lo­ca­tion of the Oc­to­ber 14 blast be­lieved to have killed two Trinida­di­ans—Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo. Sama­roo, 41, was a fa­ther of three boys. Joseph, 26, was a fish­er­man ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives. The men were sup­pos­ed­ly re­turn­ing to Trinidad from Venezuela when they were killed.  

Sobers said the Gov­ern­ment had no in­for­ma­tion that the two were killed in the US strike and ad­vised the rel­a­tives of the men to file miss­ing per­sons re­ports with the po­lice. Rel­a­tives did so when they vis­it­ed the po­lice last week­end.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, the US be­gan an an­ti-drug traf­fick­ing cam­paign where sev­er­al ves­sels were tar­get­ed in ki­net­ic airstrikes. The dead­ly strikes have been la­belled as ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings by some, in­clud­ing the New York City Bar As­so­ci­a­tion, ac­cord­ing to the at­tor­ney.  

Since the in­ci­dents, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has open­ly sup­port­ed the strikes, say­ing a day af­ter the first one that the US should kill the drug traf­fick­ers vi­o­lent­ly. Even with the sus­pect­ed deaths of the two na­tion­als, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mains res­olute in her sup­port.

In his pre­am­ble to the re­quest, Ramkhal­whan stat­ed that the pur­pose of the FOIA re­quest is to fa­cil­i­tate Per­sad’s lat­est ini­tia­tive, ti­tled Mil­i­tary Strikes in the Caribbean 2025, which he in­tends to pub­lish. He said this seeks to pro­mote trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty re­gard­ing the lethal force used by the US mil­i­tary and the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse.

“The FOIA ap­pli­cant be­lieves the state­ments of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter 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, a Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice adorn­ing the Pun­ish­er sym­bol to glo­ri­fy vengeance rather than jus­tice, and now, an open en­dorse­ment to kill/ex­e­cute per­sons on the high seas/in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters.”

Rel­a­tives of both men, through their at­tor­ney, said they sup­port the in­for­ma­tion re­quest. They said the Gov­ern­ment ought to pro­vide the de­tails of where these strikes are oc­cur­ring and what­ev­er re­ports were sent to the Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion about the strikes.

“We need some con­fir­ma­tion as to the iden­ti­ties of the per­sons who were killed on the 14th Oc­to­ber 2025! Isn’t it right that the per­sons who are killing must know who they are killing?”