Mottley rejects Kamla’s claim Brent Thomas was abducted from Barbados; says it’s defamatory in the extreme

“A scur­rilous lie and defam­a­to­ry in the ex­treme.”

That was how Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley yes­ter­day de­scribed com­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her speech at the open­ing Cari­com 50th Heads of Gov­ern­ment meet­ing on Tues­day.

Mot­t­ley was re­spond­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­man Brent Thomas had been “kid­napped” from Bar­ba­dos.

Dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “In Oc­to­ber 2022, the then-sit­ting T&T gov­ern­ment co­or­di­nat­ed the kid­nap­ping of a Trinidad cit­i­zen from an­oth­er Cari­com state. He was vis­it­ing an­oth­er Cari­com state, and he was kid­napped. Our Supreme Court has ruled that he was kid­napped. He was placed in hand­cuffs, trans­port­ed to the air­port, and then back to Trinidad. I think an RSS plane was used to trans­port him. He was kid­napped.”

She was re­fer­ring to the 2022 ar­rest of Thomas at a ho­tel in Bar­ba­dos and his re­turn to Trinidad aboard a mil­i­tary air­craft, al­though the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice did not ini­ti­ate for­mal ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings. A High Court judge lat­er ruled the act an “un­law­ful ab­duc­tion,” prompt­ing an apol­o­gy from the Trinidad and To­ba­go gov­ern­ment, with both coun­tries ac­cept­ing li­a­bil­i­ty for con­sti­tu­tion­al breach­es.

But Mot­t­ley yes­ter­day flat­ly re­ject­ed the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the in­ci­dent as a kid­nap­ping.

“To de­scribe it as a kid­nap­ping is a most un­for­tu­nate term be­cause ar­rest war­rants were pre­sent­ed by the Trinidad po­lice to the Bar­ba­dos po­lice. As to what hap­pened, we don’t know be­cause we don’t get in­volved in op­er­a­tional mat­ters. So, as it tran­spired, we, in fact, knew noth­ing about it. It is on­ly when this mat­ter be­came a pub­lic is­sue that we then had to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what tran­spired and it was clear that the Trinidad and To­ba­go po­lice, as has been the prac­tice for decades in this re­gion, would have sup­plied an ar­rest war­rant which the Bar­ba­dos po­lice would have act­ed up­on.”

She added: “But to de­scribe it as kid­nap­ping or to sug­gest that any mem­ber of Cab­i­net or any mem­ber of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary class or gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos is in­volved in kid­nap­ping is a scur­rilous lie and defam­a­to­ry in the ex­treme. We all know what tran­spired and it is re­gret­table that it hap­pened.”

How­ev­er, Mot­t­ley said the long­stand­ing in­for­mal prac­tice of ex­e­cut­ing ar­rest war­rants be­tween Caribbean states un­der­scored the need for leg­isla­tive re­form.

“We un­der­stood at the time and we said, our at­tor­ney gen­er­al said at the time, that the for­mal process of ex­tra­di­tion, which we do ex­tra-re­gion­al­ly with oth­er coun­tries, has not and was not prac­ticed in the re­gion among our­selves by any coun­try in the re­gion. And there­fore, to that ex­tent, we ac­knowl­edge that we need to be able to change how we op­er­ate,” Mot­t­ley said.

“That is why the Cari­com ar­rest war­rant is be­ing pur­sued. That is why leg­is­la­tion has to be passed in every Cari­com coun­try to be able to fa­cil­i­tate that Cari­com ar­rest war­rant. We al­so have, for ex­am­ple, as I said, the min­is­te­r­i­al state­ments to par­lia­ment from both the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al in 2023 and the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Cari­com Ar­rest War­rant Treaty came in­to force at the re­gion­al lev­el in 2018 af­ter suf­fi­cient rat­i­fi­ca­tions. How­ev­er, it on­ly be­comes legal­ly en­force­able with­in a mem­ber state once do­mes­tic leg­is­la­tion is passed.

Guyana, St Lu­cia and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da have en­act­ed lo­cal laws to op­er­a­tionalise the sys­tem. T&T has rat­i­fied the treaty but has not yet passed the re­quired do­mes­tic leg­is­la­tion. Sev­er­al oth­er Cari­com states re­main at var­i­ous stages of im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment last night, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not take of­fence to Mot­t­ley’s claims, say­ing the Bar­ba­dos PM “sim­ply ex­plained her po­si­tion from her gov­ern­ment’s side in a clear and co­gent man­ner.”

“She (Mot­t­ley) re­peat­ed what her for­mer AG Dale Mar­shall said in their par­lia­ment in 2023 re­gard­ing the Brent Thomas case. I don’t see any­thing wrong with that,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“Sure, she did an in­ter­view and gave her views in a pleas­ant man­ner. I don’t see any is­sue.”