PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad: Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar praised a US strike on a boat suspected of carrying drugs in the southern Caribbean and said that all traffickers should be killed “violently.”
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that 11 people were killed aboard the boat that had departed Venezuela, which is located near Trinidad and Tobago.
“I, along with most of the country, am happy that the US naval deployment is having success in their mission,” Persad-Bissessar said in a statement late Tuesday. “The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the drugs aboard the vessel were likely headed to Trinidad or elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Persad-Bissessar said that restricting illegal guns, drugs and human trafficking would decrease violence in the Caribbean region and the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which has imposed two state of emergencies in recent months.
“Our country has been ravaged by bloody violence and addiction because of the greed of the cartels,” Persad-Bissessar said. “The slaughter of our people is fueled by evil cartel traffickers.”
US action under scrutiny
Other Caribbean leaders were more reserved in their remarks.
Barbadian Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds told The Associated Press on Wednesday that members of Caricom, a regional trade bloc, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking for an open line of communication on developments, saying they want to avoid being surprised by any US moves against Venezuela.
“What we want really...is a structure where we would be able to have shared information affecting US assets in the region, establishing channels of communication and, importantly where possible, some consultation to maintain practical cooperation for continued mutual confidence and avoidance of misunderstandings,” he said.
Symmonds also said that depending on Rubio’s response, both sides could arrange a face-to-face meeting to discuss fears that the region’s long-desired designation as a zone of peace is maintained.
“What effectively we are trying to do is to work through the diplomatic channels of making sure that there are no surprises,” Symmonds said.
Meanwhile, Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday questioned the US operation, saying that it’s possible to conduct maritime interdiction of drug shipments without attacking a vessel’s occupants. He said that Colombia typically captures them, since those transporting the drugs “are not the big drug traffickers,” but rather, “very poor young people” from the region.
“Bombing the boat violates the universal principle of proportionality of force and results in murder,” the leftist president wrote on X.
Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said that while organized crime groups are a “huge threat” to human rights in Latin America, regional governments need to strengthen their judicial capacity to dismantle them.
“If the circumstances around this strike are exactly as the administration describes them, it would amount to an extrajudicial execution, prohibited under international law,” she said.
Tren de Aragua tentacles in Trinidad
Trump has said that the vessel targeted in the strike in international waters was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The White House didn’t immediately explain how the military determined that those aboard the vessel were Tren de Aragua members.
In July, the government of Trinidad and Tobago designated Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization, meaning that authorities can freeze any property, funds or assets owned or controlled by the gang.
Authorities have confirmed that the gang is active in the Caribbean nation, with its presence mainly in central and east Trinidad.
A high-ranking police official with deep knowledge of gang operations told the AP that Tren de Aragua’s operations are on a small scale in Trinidad. He said the group still has to contend with bigger local gangs and don’t stay in certain areas when they go to Trinidad to collect money or talk business.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions, said authorities don’t have an estimate of how many Tren de Aragua gang members operate in the twin-island nation given their constant illegal entry and departure. He said they deal mostly in drug, weapons and human trafficking.
The strike came after the US announced last month that it planned to boost its maritime force in waters off Venezuela to fight threats from Latin American drug cartels.
Trinidad and Tobago leader praises strike and says US should kill all drug traffickers ‘violently’
https://arab.news/r4n4s
Trinidad and Tobago leader praises strike and says US should kill all drug traffickers ‘violently’
- Kamla Persad-Bissessar: ‘The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently’
- Persad-Bissessar: ‘Our country has been ravaged by bloody violence and addiction because of the greed of the cartels. The slaughter of our people is fueled by evil cartel traffickers’
How a Syrian refugee chef met Britain’s King Charles
- Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace
LONDON: Pots clanged and oil sizzled inside the London kitchen of Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, as the former refugee who fled his country’s civil war recalled hosting King Charles III.
When the chef left his war-torn homeland in 2015, he never imagined that one day he would watch as cameras flashed and wide-eyed crowds greeted the monarch arriving at his Soho restaurant last year.
Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace before an event honoring humanitarian work in 2023.
“I told him ‘I would love for you to visit our restaurant one day’ and he said: ‘I would love to’... I was over the Moon to be honest.”
The chef has come a long way since he arrived in London after an arduous journey from Damascus with virtually no money in his pocket.
Fearing for his life, he had escaped Syria after his family was uprooted again and again by fighting.
His culinary empire — restaurants, cafes, and juice bars peppered across the Syrian capital — had been destroyed by bombing in just six days in 2013.
Alarnab spent three months crisscrossing Europe in the back of lorries, aboard trains, on foot and even on a bicycle before he reached the UK.
“When I left, I left with nothing,” he told AFP, as waiters whirled past carrying steaming plates of traditional Syrian fare.
Starving and exhausted, he spent the last of his money on a train ticket to Doncaster where his sister lived.
“Love letter from Syria”
To make a living, Alarnab initially picked up any odd jobs, such as washing and selling cars, saving enough to bring his wife and three daughters over after seven months.
His love of cooking never left him though. In France, while he was sleeping on the steps of a church, Alarnab had often cooked for hundreds of other refugees.
“I always dreamed of going back to cooking,” he said.
So it wasn’t long before he found himself back in the kitchen, cooking up a storm across London with his sold-out supper clubs, bustling pop-up cafes, and crowded lunchtime falafel bars.
Alarnab’s friends gave him the initial boost for his first pop-up in 2017, and profits from his new catering business then covered the costs of later events.
He now runs two restaurants in the city — one in Soho’s buzzing Kingly Court and another nestled in a corner of the vibrant Somerset House arts center.
“I was looking for a city to love when I found London,” Alarnab said, adding it had offered him “space to innovate” and add his own modern twist to classic Syrian dishes.
Far from home, Alarnab said his word-of-mouth success had grown into a “love letter from Syria to the world” that needs no translation.
“You don’t really need to speak Arabic or Syrian to know that this is the best falafel ever,” he said, pointing to a row of colorful plates.
“There is hope”
For Alarnab, spices frying, dough rising and cheese melting inside a kitchen offered an unlikely escape from the real world.
“All my problems, I leave them outside the kitchen and walk in fresh.”
When he fled Syria, Alarnab thought going back to Damascus was forever off the table.
Yet he returned for the first time in October, almost a year to the day after longtime leader Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive — ending almost 14 years of brutal civil war.
He walked the familiar streets of his old home, where his late mother taught him to cook many years ago.
“To return to Damascus and for her not to be there, that was extremely difficult.”
Torn between the two cities, Alarnab said he longed to one day rebuild his home in Damascus.
“I wish I could go back and live there. But at the same time, I feel like London is now a part of me. I don’t know if I could ever go back and just be in Syria,” he said.
Although Syrians still bear the scars of war, Alarnab said he had seen “hope in people’s eyes which was missing when I left in 2015.”
“The road ahead is still very long, and yes this is only the beginning — but there is hope.”
