7 Venezuelans sentenced for drug trafficking

SEVEN Venezuelan men convicted of trafficking 72.56 kilogrammes of cocaine after they were held in the waters off the north coast of Trinidad by the Coast Guard in 2016 have been sentenced to 16 years and five months.

The seven were among eight Venezuelans held, but one died before the case went to trial in 2023 before Justice Hayden St Clair-Douglas.

On January 30, the seven were convicted and were sentenced on December 3. The delay in sentencing involved securing Interpol reports of previous convictions and correcting reports from the prison on their conduct.

The seven sentenced by St Clair-Douglas on December 3 were Victor Jose Careno, Oscar Thomas Ruiz Colmarenaz, Dionys Andres Marval Salazar, Alexis Caldea Lopez, Pablo Rafael Marval Rodriguez, Saul Elia Waldrop, and Jose Florentino Alcala Carrio.

The eighth man, Jose Gregorio Marval Salazar, died of cancer.

In 2021, his attorney Mario Merritt successfully obtained a court order for his return to Venezuela for palliative care.

Salazar and the others were denied bail and held on remand. When his health worsened, his attorneys tried to secure his bail, which was eventually granted. But he was unable to access it and in July 2020, he had emergency surgery at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope. Doctors there gave him months to live.

St Clair-Douglas said the prosecution told the court the State would formally discontinue the case against Salazar, but up until the close of evidence, nothing had been filed. The judge has adjourned that aspect of the case to April 9, 2025.

The trial of the remaining men took place at the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain and on January 30, the judge gave his verdict. It was a judge-only trial. Their sentences will begin from the date of their conviction.

Careno's attorney argued for leniency due to his end-stage renal disease, but the court ruled that his current medical care sufficed and declined to impose a non-custodial sentence. The judge admonished the defence for failing to advance submissions on the law of sentencing, instead telling the court it knew the law.

St Clair-Douglas highlighted the gravity of the crime, calling it the smuggling of a "significant quantity of a dangerous drug" into Trinidad and Tobago. He emphasised the societal damage caused by cocaine trafficking, including the widespread repercussions of drug abuse, the facilitation of gang violence, and the general upsurge in crime.

"This type of activity is usually undertaken for significant financial gain," St Clair-Douglas noted, adding that the court could not overlook the broader implications of such offences.

It was the State’s case that on July 2, 2016, after midnight, Coast Guard officers were patrolling the waters when they encountered a pirogue, the El Libertador. The occupants of the boat began throwing white packets into the sea when they saw the coastguardsmen.

The Coast Guard ordered the men to stop, but the pirogue rammed into the Coast Guard vessel three times, leading the coastguardsmen to shoot out three of the pirogue’s four outboard engines.

The El Libertador was commandeered and some of the officers boarded it while the others retraced their route to retrieve the packages that had been thrown out at sea.

The men, the boat and the packages were taken to the Coast Guard base and the police were called in.

Tests identified that the packages contained cocaine. There were 84 packages in all.

The men's defence was that the white bags which contained the individual packages of cocaine were never on their boat. They claimed they were out at sea looking for a lost boat and the Coast Guard attacked the El Libertador and put the drugs in their pirogue.

None of the men testified at their trial, at which they were assisted by several interpreters.

In analysing the evidence, St Clair-Douglas said he was satisfied with the guilt of each man, returning guilty verdicts for all except Salazar.

He credited the seven for their clean records in prison but noted none, except for one, took part in any programme. When four complained they had done courses in prison, he told them to take up their protest with their lawyer, who failed to mitigate on their behalf.