Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers says they are still in the process of ver­i­fy­ing the T&T na­tion­al who has been de­tained in Venezuela in con­nec­tion with a threat to that coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The man was ar­rest­ed by Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties sev­er­al weeks ago, lead­ing to height­ened ten­sions fol­low­ing a warn­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The Prime Min­is­ter cau­tioned Venezuela against en­ter­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­ry to con­duct search­es, stress­ing re­spect for na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

This af­ter both Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­la Maduro and Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo claimed a Trinida­di­an na­tion­al, whom he named as “Guis Kendell Jerome,” had been cap­tured while trav­el­ling to Venezuela with a group la­belled “ter­ror­ists” in an at­tempt to desta­bilise that coun­try’s gov­ern­ment.

Ica­cos res­i­dents have since in­di­cat­ed that Jerome was in­deed a Tri­ni na­tion­al who was now liv­ing in Venezuela.

Speak­ing out­side the Red House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter Sobers ex­plained that while diplo­mat­ic cor­re­spon­dence has been main­tained with Venezue­lan of­fi­cials on the Tri­ni na­tion­al, “we are in the process of do­ing that as it per­tains to some of the as­sis­tance as far as the con­ven­tion will al­low us to de­liv­er to that per­son.”

He em­pha­sised that con­firm­ing the de­tained in­di­vid­ual’s na­tion­al­i­ty is a cru­cial step be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go’s em­bassy in Venezuela can en­gage di­rect­ly through the lo­cal jus­tice sys­tem.

“Once we con­firm iden­ti­ty with re­spect to doc­u­men­ta­tion, then we would have the em­bassy across in Venezuela make con­tact through their jus­tice sys­tem, be­cause we re­spect their jus­tice sys­tem across there,” Sobers said.

De­spite the on­go­ing iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, the min­is­ter re­as­sured that the bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela re­mains strong and trans­par­ent.

“The re­la­tion­ship has nev­er changed. It has al­ways been open and trans­par­ent. We have a very, very good bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela,” he said.

Min­is­ter Sobers fur­ther not­ed that once the per­son’s iden­ti­ty is con­firmed, the min­istry will pro­ceed with pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary con­sular as­sis­tance in line with in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols and con­ven­tions.