Relatives of missing Trinidad fishermen go silent, Trinidad Guardian reports

Rel­a­tives of the kid­napped Morne Di­a­blo fish­er­man are re­fus­ing to com­ment on the mat­ter as they claim me­dia cov­er­age is jeop­ar­dis­ing the safe­ty of the men, the online edition of the Trinidad Guardian has reported.

According to Trinidad Guardian, one of the fish­er­men, Jer­ry O’Brien, 36, was re­leased by his cap­tors on Wednes­day but his broth­er Ja­son O’Brien, 38, Bran­don Ar­joon, 28, Lin­ton Manohar, 36, Jagdesh Jaikaran, 16 and Ricky Ramb­harose,35, are still in the hands of their ab­duc­tors

The men left the Morne Di­a­blo beach at around 4 pm on Mon­day to fish.

They were ex­pect­ed to re­turn home that same day. How­ev­er, one of the men con­tact­ed Manohar’s broth­er and re­port­ed that they were kid­napped at sea and tak­en to Venezuela.

A voice note was lat­er re­ceived, with Manohar stat­ing that the kid­nap­pers had de­mand­ed a US$200,000 ran­som for their safe re­lease.

The kid­nap­pers threat­ened to start cut­ting off the limbs of the men if the ran­som was not paid.

A pho­to was al­so sent to the fam­i­ly, show­ing the men, ex­cept Ramb­harose, sit­ting on the ground with guns point­ed at them, the Trinidad Guardian has reported.

Over the past few days, rel­a­tives have been try­ing to sell off as­sets to pay the ran­som.

Accordingto the Trinidad Guardian, at a me­dia con­fer­ence at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had been in con­tact with the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary about the kid­nap­pings.