Alexander mum on US persons of interest list after counter-cartel meeting

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the coun­try will know more about those who are on a list of sus­pect­ed drug traf­fick­ers, com­piled by the Unit­ed States, soon.

In a news­pa­per re­port pub­lished yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said the Unit­ed States had com­piled a list of per­sons of in­ter­est in the coun­try linked to il­le­gal drugs, guns and vi­o­lence.

The list comes af­ter the coun­try be­came a sig­na­to­ry on the US-led Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC), which US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said would in­volve dead­ly force against the car­tels in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Asked yes­ter­day if any­one on the list was part of the catch­ment of those re­leased with­out charge at the end of the last State of Emer­gency, Alexan­der said: “We’ll let you know when that time comes. I hope you’re not on the list, Mr Jensen.”

In the lead-up to the Unit­ed States de­tain­ing Venezuela’s then pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro, there were sev­er­al ki­net­ic airstrikes in the re­gion against sup­posed drug traf­fick­ers, killing over 100 peo­ple.

The ac­tion was con­demned world­wide as a breach of in­ter­na­tion­al law. How­ev­er, both the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said the coun­try, in sup­port­ing the killings, did not breach in­ter­na­tion­al laws.

Af­ter the first strike in Sep­tem­ber last year, Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­vit­ed the US to “kill them all vi­o­lent­ly.”

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts pre­dict a sim­i­lar type of ac­tion with the AC­CC.

In ad­dress­ing this, Alexan­der, in the me­dia re­port, said: “We sup­port the ag­gres­sive ac­tion against those per­sons who con­tin­ue to kill our cit­i­zens through their traf­fick­ing. They are killing the en­tire so­ci­ety with their ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, which im­pact our youth. We are fed up. We want cit­i­zens to look like and act and ap­pear to be the fu­ture lead­ers of to­mor­row, not a whole heap of pipers walk­ing around.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert and re­tired lieu­tenant com­man­der Nor­man Din­di­al said the AC­CC is not need­ed to ad­dress the drug prob­lem in the coun­try.

“You can­not shoot and bomb or­gan­ised crime out of ex­is­tence. Even if you cap­ture or kill the big fish, dis­rupt ac­tiv­i­ties and sup­ply chains, de­stroy drug labs, and kill drug mules and smug­glers, any thought­ful mil­i­tary of­fi­cer or in­tel­li­gence an­a­lyst can tell you that it achieves tru­ly lit­tle to­wards the larg­er goal of elim­i­nat­ing or­gan­ised crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty,” Din­di­al said.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert and lec­tur­er at the UWI, Dr Keron Niles, mean­while warned that sup­port­ing such mil­i­tary ac­tions would have a neg­a­tive long-term im­pact on the coun­try.