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Family members and neighbours have identified two men from Trinidad and Tobago who are believed to be among six people killed in a US airstrike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela.
Without providing evidence, Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the strike in international waters had killed six “narcoterrorists” and claimed that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and said that it was “associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks”.
Trinidad police said they were still confirming whether Trinidadians were among the dead, but residents of the north coast fishing village of Las Cuevas told the Guardian that two locals , Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were on the sunken vessel.
Samaroo was released from prison in 2021 after serving time for his role in the 2009 murder of a street vendor.
Speaking with local media, Joseph’s mother, Lenore Burnley, said her 26-year-old son was not involved in drugs and lamented that the family had no body to bury. “I leave everything in God’s hand,” she said.
Burnley told AFP by phone that people her family know in Venezuela “told them he was on the boat”.
“According to maritime law, if you see a boat, you are supposed to stop the boat and intercept it, not just blow it up. That’s our Trinidadian maritime law and I think every fisherman and every human knows that,” she said.
Burnley said her son was planning to return to Trinidad and Tobago after spending three months with family in Venezuela, just 6.8 miles (11km) away.
Joseph’s grandmother, Christine Clement, also rejected claims of trafficking, calling the attack “wickedness”.
At least 27 people have been killed so far in such attacks off the coast of Venezuela, which the Trump administration says are necessary to protect the United States from smuggled narcotics from Venezuela.
Last month, fishermen in Las Cuevas told the Guardian that they were afraid of being caught in the crossfire amid Trump’s “war on drugs” in the region. Instead of their usual route, heading west, toward Venezuela, fishers said they now head east, staying close to the coast of Trinidad.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the US had since expanded its mission with elite special operations aviation unit helicopters conducting training exercises in the region.
Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, has expressed strong support for the United States’ strike on a Venezuela-based drug vessel, telling local journalists she had “no sympathy for traffickers” and that the US military should “kill them all violently”. She added that the military mission would reduce violence in the region and asked for divine protection for US personnel involved in the mission.
But other Caribbean leaders have described the US military activity as a threat to the peace and security in the region.
Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, Gaston Browne, made it clear that his country had no interest in hosting foreign military installations, after Grenada’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed it was carefully reviewing a request from the US for the “temporary installation of radar equipment and associated technical personnel”.
In response to US military buildup in the region, Nicolás Maduro, ordered large-scale military exercises on Wednesday and said he was mobilizing the military, police and a civilian militia to defend his country.
