Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics 

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has thanked the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary for car­ry­ing out a strike on a ves­sel in the south­ern Caribbean sus­pect­ed of trans­port­ing nar­cotics. He said he does not pity the 11 peo­ple who died on the ves­sel or any­one run­ning afoul of the law.

Yes­ter­day’s at­tack was de­scribed by the US as a “ki­net­ic strike” car­ried out on in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters against a ves­sel al­leged­ly op­er­at­ed by the Venezue­lan gang Tren de Aragua. US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump stat­ed that 11 peo­ple he de­scribed as “nar­co ter­ror­ists” were killed.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar backed the US strike, say­ing she and “most of the coun­try” wel­comed the suc­cess of the naval mis­sion. She added that the Unit­ed States had pledged to tar­get drug car­tels and was now de­liv­er­ing on that com­mit­ment, not­ing that il­lic­it drugs and arms had brought “death and de­struc­tion” to Trinidad and To­ba­go for the past 25 years.

The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er is now fol­low­ing suit as he too is sup­port­ing the US’ move.

In a voice note sent via What­sApp Gue­var­ro said, “I am grate­ful for the de­ci­sive U.S. in­ter­ven­tion. The re­sources de­ployed will un­doubt­ed­ly place a sig­nif­i­cant dent in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing across the South­ern Caribbean. Let this serve as a clear warn­ing to our fish­ers of for­tune who board their pirogues chas­ing per­ilous tides of prof­it.”

The Com­mis­sion­er warned that the “wa­ters have changed”. And he is ad­vis­ing peo­ple head­ing out to sea that it is time to catch fish to feed the na­tion, and not as “drug smug­glers mas­querad­ing as fish­er­men.”

He said when the US ar­ma­da comes call­ing, “I wish you luck in treat­ing with what will not be a hap­py end­ing.”

Gue­var­ro said he has “ab­solute­ly no pity” for any­one caught by the US do­ing il­le­gal acts.

A video pur­port­ing to be of the at­tack on the ves­sel was post­ed on­line.

Venezue­lan Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Fred­dy Ñáñez has ques­tioned the au­then­tic­i­ty of the video, sug­gest­ing it may have been cre­at­ed us­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, call­ing it an "al­most car­toon­ish an­i­ma­tion.”