An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Two weeks af­ter a memo­r­i­al ser­vice was held for one of two Trinida­di­an fish­er­men be­lieved to have been killed dur­ing a US airstrike in the Gulf of Paria, rel­a­tives of both men have now filed miss­ing per­sons’ re­ports with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Ac­cord­ing to some­one close to both fam­i­lies, it is hoped the move by rel­a­tives of Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo will now prompt lo­cal law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine and con­firm the iden­ti­ties of the six men who were killed dur­ing the Oc­to­ber 14th airstrike of their fish­ing ves­sel off the coast of Venezuela by the US.

Joseph’s fam­i­ly claim he and Sama­roo were among those killed when the US mil­i­tary de­stroyed a boat which was al­leged to have been trans­port­ing drug traf­fick­ers with an il­le­gal haul of nar­cotics.

The par­tic­u­lar strike at that time was the fifth such strike by US in its of­fen­sive against al­leged nar­co-traf­fick­ers in the South­ern Caribbean. With­out pro­vid­ing any ev­i­dence, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump claimed the strike had left six “nar­co-ter­ror­ists” dead.

Rel­a­tives of Joseph held a memo­r­i­al ser­vice in his ho­n­our on Oc­to­ber 22 at the St Michael’s RC Church in Las Cuevas – days af­ter be­lat­ed­ly ac­cept­ing he had per­ished in the at­tack that had left the six peo­ple dead.

How­ev­er, the on­ly proof that Joseph’s fam­i­ly had that he and Sama­roo were on board the ves­sel was a brief con­ver­sa­tion with him days ear­li­er, dur­ing which time he al­leged­ly in­di­cat­ed the two would have been at­tempt­ing to re­turn to the coun­try af­ter spend­ing sev­er­al months in Venezuela.

Al­though po­lice of­fi­cers reached out to Joseph’s fam­i­ly days af­ter the memo­r­i­al ser­vice, rel­a­tives were said to have been dis­sat­is­fied with the lack of in­for­ma­tion and as­sis­tance by lo­cal po­lice.

But in a dra­mat­ic turn­around on Sat­ur­day, rel­a­tives of both Joseph and Sama­roo filed the miss­ing per­sons’ re­ports at the Mara­cas Bay Po­lice Sta­tion.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of the re­port, filed by Joseph’s 37-year-old fe­male rel­a­tive, which claimed the 26-year-old fish­er­man, of Sal­vary Lane, St Michael’s Vil­lage, Las Cuevas, had last been seen around 5 am on April 25, dur­ing which time he al­leged­ly told her he was go­ing to fish.

How­ev­er, no miss­ing per­sons’ re­ports were ever filed be­fore Sat­ur­day in re­spect of both men.

Guardian Me­dia was able to con­firm, via a re­ceipt, that a woman liv­ing at Bim Bim Trace, El So­cor­ro, filed a sim­i­lar re­port with the Mara­cas Bay Po­lice Sta­tion on Sama­roo’s be­half.

Guardian Me­dia learned the po­lice are ex­pect­ed to vis­it Joseph’s home in Las Cuevas, which is where he would have last been seen in April, but it is un­clear when this will take place as the fam­i­ly has asked for time to con­sult with their at­tor­ney, Keron Ramkhal­wan, be­fore giv­ing the go-ahead.