Raphael John Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo is deny­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s claim that the US mil­i­tary de­stroyed a Venezue­lan ves­sel with drugs that could have been on the way to Trinidad. And he has al­so launched an­oth­er at­tack on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, la­belling her a “drunk” leader.

Ca­bel­lo, who has re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused T&T of desta­bil­is­ing Venezuela over the last few months, made the com­ment on his week­ly pro­gramme, Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, on Wednes­day night.

On Tues­day, the US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio claimed that the US mil­i­tary de­stroyed a Venezue­lan ves­sel al­leged­ly car­ry­ing drugs which was pos­si­bly on its way to T&T and 11 per­sons were killed.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is­sued a state­ment right af­ter say­ing she ful­ly sup­port­ed the ac­tions of the US gov­ern­ment.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Ca­bel­lo said al­le­ga­tions of the boat pos­si­bly head­ing to T&T as it was de­stroyed were all “lies”.

“Now, Mar­co Ru­bio said it seems that the ves­sel was go­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go. They are liars.”

He added, “For ex­am­ple, there is the stu­pid crook who gov­erns the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and the drunk who gov­erns Trinidad and To­ba­go. When they ar­rive and leave, well, a drunk, she sides with this at­tack, they are con­demn­ing their peo­ple to be ex­e­cut­ed at sea. That’s right. Their fish­er­men are be­ing con­demned to be ex­e­cut­ed.”

He ar­gued that “things don’t add up,” when ex­am­in­ing the en­gines, fu­el ca­pac­i­ty, and the num­ber of peo­ple car­ry­ing them, as well as the tonnes of drugs al­leged­ly be­ing traf­ficked.

Ca­bel­lo al­so stat­ed that if this type of ves­sel had left from the north­ern­most part of Venezuela, it would have to trav­el about 2,500 km to reach Flori­da, and would have to re­fu­el about 18 times, but no fu­el cans were seen.

“Where are the cans? Some­one can ex­plain it to me?” Ca­bel­lo asked.

“Let’s sup­pose it was drugs, and they mur­dered these 11 peo­ple, they do not have the right to mur­der any­one. If that were the case, they would be vi­o­lat­ing their own laws. If they mur­dered a group of peo­ple, it would be a state­ment against them. It would be fool­ish, be­cause they are con­fess­ing to hav­ing com­mit­ted a crime.”

He al­so ques­tioned Don­ald Trump’s state­ments that “they lit­er­al­ly shot down a boat that was trans­port­ing a large quan­ti­ty of drugs.”

“The White House did not ex­plain how the US Naval forces de­ter­mined that the boat came from Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry, loaded with drugs, nor what pro­ce­dure was used to iden­ti­fy the ‘car­tel’ in charge of the trans­fer, nor the na­tion­al­i­ties of those on board the boat,” Ca­bel­lo said.

The Venezue­lan min­is­ter re­called that for the past 31 years, the Unit­ed Na­tions has as­sert­ed in its re­ports that “Venezuela is free of cul­ti­va­tion, lab­o­ra­to­ries, and tran­sit.”

Ca­bel­lo said for a nar­co-state to ex­ist, these con­di­tions must be met: a car­tel that pro­duces, process­es, and traf­fics, and none of these con­di­tions are met in the Venezue­lan case.