Two regional neighbors this week sparred over allegations that authorities had back in 2022 facilitated the kidnapping of a Trinidadian citizen while visiting Barbados, with one calling the other a liar and the other contending that not a single official has so far moved to explain the scenario.
The case concerns Trinidadian businessman and arms dealer Brent Thomas, who was flown back to the republic by local police in handcuffs, based on a warrant Trinidadian police allegedly furnished to Barbadian officials.
Saying, basically, that she remains bewildered by the incident and the silence of the Guyana-based CARICOM secretariat on the issue, Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar raised the alleged kidnapping at Tuesday’s opening ceremony of the regional summit in St. Kitts, criticizing the regional body for recalcitrance as Secretary General Carla Barnett sat in the audience. She described the experience as “deeply unsettling.”
“I have not had the response from the secretariat,” she said as leaders and invitees shifted uncomfortably in their seats, noting that perhaps “one ceases to be recognized by the secretariat as a member of CARICOM when not in government.”
Angry with the accusation that Barbadian officials had colluded with Trinidadian law enforcement to force Thomas back home, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley was forthright in her response.
She said PM Persad Bissessar’s description of the situation as a kidnapping was an “unfortunate use of the word kidnapping. A scurrilous lie and defamatory in the extreme. But to describe it as kidnapping or to suggest that any member of the 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,” she told reporters in St. Kitts.
She also doubled down on how the arrest went down, noting that “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.”
Thomas, a well-known arms dealer and contractor with local law enforcement, had been accused of illegally having explosives and other devices in his possession that were found during an audit of his business. Reacting to the back-and-forth between the two leaders, Thomas this week said he would love to know exactly what transpired four years ago, while Mottley noted this is why a regional arrest warrant system is being pursued.
