Caption: Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, left, and T&T Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Summary

• Barbados PM Mia Mottley has condemned as ‘defamatory’ remarks by T&T PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar describing a 2022 cross-border operation as a ‘kidnapping.’
• Persad-Bissessar told the CARICOM summit a T&T national was seized in another member state and taken back to Trinidad, citing court rulings.
• Mottley says arrest warrants were presented to Barbadian police and rejects any suggestion Barbados’s government authorised a kidnapping.
• The case involves Brent Thomas, whose return to Trinidad was later ruled an ‘unlawful abduction,’ leading to an apology and accepted liability for constitutional breaches.
• The dispute has renewed focus on passing domestic laws to operationalise the CARICOM Arrest Warrant Treaty across the region.

 

 

BRIDGETOWN – Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has described as “a scurrilous lie and defamatory in the extreme” comments by Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar about the 2022 arrest of Trinidad and Tobago national Brent Thomas in Barbados.

Persad-Bissessar, speaking at the opening of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) summit on Tuesday night, said that “in October 2022, the then-sitting Trinidad and Tobago 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 (Regional Security System) plane was used to transport him. He was kidnapped,” Persad-Bissessar told the audience.

Mottley, speaking to Barbados’s state-owned CBC TV, 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.

“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,” Mottley said.

Mottley said the incident highlighted the need to reform how Caribbean states execute warrants across borders.

“We understood at the time—and 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,” she 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, ministerial statements to Parliament from both the former attorney general in 2023 and the former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago,” she added.

Thomas was arrested at a hotel in Barbados in 2022 and returned to Trinidad, although the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) did not initiate formal extradition proceedings. A High Court judge later ruled the action amounted to an “unlawful abduction,” prompting an apology from the Trinidad and Tobago government, with both countries accepting liability for constitutional breaches.

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

Guyana, St Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda have enacted local laws to operationalise the system. Trinidad and Tobago has ratified the treaty but has not yet passed the required domestic legislation.

The Trinidad Guardian reported on Friday that, when contacted for comment, Persad-Bissessar said she did not take offence at Mottley’s remarks.

“She simply explained her position from her government’s side in a clear and cogent manner,” Persad-Bissessar said. “She 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.” (CMC)