RAPHAEL LALL

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump says the Unit­ed States has car­ried out an­oth­er at­tack on a nar­co-boat in the Caribbean, killing three peo­ple he de­scribed as “ter­ror­ists.”

The an­nounce­ment came mere hours be­fore Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro held a news con­fer­ence where he ques­tioned who was in­flu­enc­ing T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as he ac­cused her of mak­ing “al­most like a de­c­la­ra­tion of war” against his coun­try. He has al­so called for a White House in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a video re­leased by Trump on Sep­tem­ber 2 that al­leged­ly showed a strike on a boat car­ry­ing drugs from Venezuela.

Speak­ing from Cara­cas yes­ter­day, Maduro asked, “Who is be­hind this? Who is whis­per­ing in the ears of this la­dy? How is she able to de­clare this?”

He linked Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s stance to US Sen­a­tor Mar­co Ru­bio, de­scrib­ing him as “the lord of death and war.”

“I am sure the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are against this. We are neigh­bour­ing coun­tries. You know that Trinidad and To­ba­go was sold by the Span­ish Em­pire to the British Em­pire a few years be­fore the in­de­pen­dence of Venezuela,” Maduro said.

He added that the two na­tions had en­joyed “a life of co­op­er­a­tion and broth­er­hood” un­til now, adding, “There has nev­er been a gov­er­nor of Trinidad and To­ba­go to threat­en a war against Venezuela.”

Maduro al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent state­ments on the Venezuela-Guyana ten­sions and her sup­port of the US de­ploy­ment of mil­i­tary as­sets in the Caribbean.

“Quite sim­ply, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go went crazy. She went crazy, threat­en­ing to au­tho­rise at­tacks against Venezuela from Trinidad and To­ba­go, prac­ti­cal­ly de­clar­ing war on Venezuela,” Maduro said.

His com­ments fol­lowed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse to Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez’s warn­ing last week that T&T and Guyana should not to “dare” sup­port the US mil­i­tary ac­tion.

The US has de­ployed war­ships and troops to the south­ern Caribbean as part of a counter-nar­cotics op­er­a­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would “dare” to do what­ev­er was nec­es­sary for T&T.

Maduro al­so chal­lenged the au­then­tic­i­ty of the Sep­tem­ber 2 video re­leased by Trump, which he said is be­ing de­bat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Some, he said, be­lieve the footage was AI-gen­er­at­ed or re­cy­cled.

“The per­son who has to in­ves­ti­gate this is the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” Maduro said.

Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties are con­duct­ing their own probe in­to re­ports that 11 peo­ple linked to the Tren de Ar­gua gang were killed in the strike but Maduro said com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the US gov­ern­ment is cur­rent­ly non-ex­is­tent.

But while Maduro has been ques­tion­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty and le­gal­i­ty of the first strike, Trump said in a Truth So­cial post yes­ter­day that the US mil­i­tary killed three peo­ple in an­oth­er strike on a ves­sel in wa­ters around South Amer­i­ca.

The US Pres­i­dent said, “This morn­ing, on my Or­ders, US Mil­i­tary Forces con­duct­ed a SEC­OND Ki­net­ic Strike against pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fied, ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly vi­o­lent drug traf­fick­ing car­tels and nar­coter­ror­ists in the SOUTH­COM area of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The strike oc­curred while these con­firmed nar­coter­ror­ists from Venezuela were in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters trans­port­ing il­le­gal nar­cotics (A DEAD­LY WEAPON POI­SON­ING AMER­I­CANS!) head­ed to the US. These ex­treme­ly vi­o­lent drug traf­fick­ing car­tels POSE A THREAT to US Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, For­eign Pol­i­cy, and vi­tal US In­ter­ests. The Strike re­sult­ed in 3 male ter­ror­ists killed in ac­tion. No US Forces were harmed in this Strike.”

Trump al­so cau­tioned those in­tent on il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANS­PORT­ING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMER­I­CANS, WE ARE HUNT­ING YOU! The il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties by these car­tels have wrought DEV­AS­TAT­ING CON­SE­QUENCES ON AMER­I­CAN COM­MU­NI­TIES FOR DECADES, killing mil­lions of Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens. NO LONGER. Thank you for your at­ten­tion to this mat­ter!!!”