Sturge praises swift rescue of kidnapped victim

A co­or­di­nat­ed mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion led to the dra­mat­ic res­cue of a kid­nap­ping vic­tim late Wednes­day night, with Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge com­mend­ing of­fi­cers for what he de­scribed as a “swift, time­ly and clin­i­cal­ly co­or­di­nat­ed” re­sponse.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, Tara Po­li­ah was ab­duct­ed short­ly af­ter sun­down. Act­ing on in­tel­li­gence, mem­bers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard, sup­port­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment, in­ter­cept­ed a ves­sel be­lieved to be head­ing to Venezuela with the vic­tim on­board.

Au­thor­i­ties con­firmed that Po­li­ah was safe­ly res­cued dur­ing the op­er­a­tion. Sev­en for­eign na­tion­als and one Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al were de­tained in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

Sturge praised Chief of De­fence Staff Com­modore Don Po­lo, along with Coast Guard and Reg­i­ment per­son­nel, for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ex­e­cu­tion. He not­ed that the suc­cess­ful res­cue un­der­scored the ef­fec­tive­ness of strength­ened co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the mil­i­tary and law en­force­ment agen­cies, par­tic­u­lar­ly un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

Fol­low-up op­er­a­tions are on­go­ing in the Mara­cas and Las Cuevas ar­eas, as se­cu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ue in­ves­ti­ga­tions and seek to de­ter­mine whether oth­ers may be in­volved.

The De­fence Min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged long­stand­ing chal­lenges af­fect­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture but reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­build­ing op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty and pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens.

He said the ac­tions of the of­fi­cers in­volved re­flect courage and ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty, adding that their ef­forts were in­stru­men­tal in se­cur­ing the vic­tim’s safe re­turn and pre­vent­ing what could have been a trag­ic out­come.