Venezuelan minister warns T&T must not become ‘another Colombia’

Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo in his lat­est state­ment about T&T is warn­ing that T&T must not be al­lowed to be­come an­oth­er Colom­bia, Venezuela’s South Amer­i­can neigh­bour wrecked by decades of gueril­la war­fare re­sult­ing in over quar­ter mil­lion deaths.

Ca­bel­lo spoke on Tues­day dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing from the Venezue­lan state of Zu­lia where he re­port­ed on the progress of in­tel­li­gence work there, which has led to the dis­cov­ery of new ev­i­dence re­gard­ing ter­ror­ist plots and desta­bil­i­sa­tion plans linked to the Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion.

“Let us re­mem­ber when the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T said they were go­ing to use lethal force against Venezuela. The gen­tle­man of Trinida­di­an ori­gin was the one who brought the weapons from T&T. He con­fessed and that is what we are warn­ing about so that T&T does not be­come Duque’s Colom­bia (Iván Duque, for­mer Colom­bian pres­i­dent) and al­low con­spir­a­cies against a neigh­bour­ing coun­try from its wa­ters, from its soil. We will de­fend our­selves against who­ev­er it maybe, at any time,” Ca­bel­lo said.

Ca­bel­lo’s lat­est state­ments come af­ter a war of words last month where he claimed that a T&T na­tion­al, Guis Kendell Jerome was part of a group of mer­ce­nar­ies in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties to desta­bilise Venezuela.

T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­gri­ly re­spond­ed say­ing any Venezue­lan ves­sel en­ter­ing T&T would be met with lethal force.

Ca­bel­lo then called her state­ments “crazy.”

De­spite the con­tin­u­ing al­le­ga­tions from Venezuela's Gov­ern­ment, in a sign of good­will, last Sat­ur­day, Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Yván Gil pre­sent­ed the First Class Or­der of Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da to T&T’s out­go­ing Am­bas­sador to Venezuela, Ed­mund Dil­lon, in recog­ni­tion of his out­stand­ing diplo­mat­ic work.

Dil­lon was ap­point­ed Am­bas­sador to Venezuela in 2021.

On Sat­ur­day, through his Telegram chan­nel, Gil wrote: "On be­half of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, we ex­press our sin­cere grat­i­tude and farewell to the Am­bas­sador of T&T to Venezuela, Ed­mund Dil­lon, to whom we have award­ed the Or­der of Fran­cis­co de Mi­ran­da, First Class."