PM sides with US saying no intl laws were breached during strikes

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she makes no apolo­gies for sid­ing with the Unit­ed States, as she de­fend­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on joint ac­tion against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

Dur­ing a lengthy ad­dress in Par­lia­ment she in­sist­ed no in­ter­na­tion­al law was breached dur­ing op­er­a­tions ki­net­ic strikes in the Caribbean sea.

“And if you had some good lawyers on your side, we have some very good ones here in­clud­ing the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, they will tell you there was no in­ter­na­tion­al law that was breached when we were tak­ing out, peo­ple were be­ing tak­en out in their boats, traf­fick­ing, hu­man traf­fick­ing, drugs, chil­dren,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“That is what we were do­ing, transna­tion­al crime. That is what we were fight­ing and we make no apol­o­gy to­day.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains fo­cused on com­bat­ing traf­fick­ing and oth­er cross-bor­der crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and de­fend­ed close co­op­er­a­tion with the US, which she de­scribed as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s old­est trad­ing part­ner.

“My main fo­cus against traf­fick­ing, against a transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime and to­day I make no apol­o­gy for stand­ing side by side, side by side with your old­est trad­ing part­ner, the leader of the free world, in this hemi­sphere,” she said. “We make no apol­o­gy to­day.”

Her com­ments echo re­marks made ear­li­er this week by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who said ad­vice he re­ceived con­firmed that US strikes against al­leged drug traf­fick­ers did not breach in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Speak­ing with the me­dia at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas, Je­re­mie said he sought ex­ter­nal le­gal ad­vice from an in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert.

“I have tak­en ad­vice. The ad­vice is that the strikes were con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al law. I took ex­ter­nal ad­vice, out­side of the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, and that was the ad­vice giv­en to me by an in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert,” Je­re­mie said.

The is­sue arose fol­low­ing claims by UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights Volk­er Türk in Oc­to­ber last year that US at­tacks, which re­port­ed­ly killed about 60 peo­ple, vi­o­lat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al law and war­rant­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The strikes in­clud­ed a Sep­tem­ber 2 at­tack that US Con­gress lat­er scru­ti­nised as a “dou­ble tap”, in which sur­vivors of an ini­tial drone strike were hit again as they at­tempt­ed to flee.

Rel­a­tives of two Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, Chad “Char­po” Joseph and Rishi Sama­roo, have said they be­lieve the men were killed dur­ing the airstrikes. Je­re­mie, how­ev­er, said there is no ev­i­dence that any Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als were killed.