“When
the sailors caught up to the trio, it was with the idea that
they (Mohammed and friends) were the drug men who were expected.
“However, after having already been robbed a number
of times on the high seas, the fishermen panicked, and tried
several times to ram the Coast Guard’s inflatable vessel.
“That’s when the shooting started.”
Mirror understands that the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force
(which also includes the Coast Guard) operates under printed
guidelines known as “Precautions Against Accidental
Discharge”.
That document is loosely referred to as “the license
to kill”, as it lets a soldier know the kinds of situations
in which he is allowed to use deadly force.
Some clauses in the document are rather broad, and permit
a soldier to “drop a man” (shoot to kill), if
there is even the slightest notion of a potential threat to
any member of the unit involved in the exercise.
The informant said that from that standpoint, the sailors’
lives would have been endangered if they had allowed Mohammed’s
pirogue to damage their inflatable.
“They (the sailors) had to protect themselves at that
point, otherwise they probably would have literally been sitting
ducks.
“Those fishermen must have known the bad reputation
that area has, and they still went there to fish in the middle
of the night.
“They should not have been there.”
The latest word on Mohammed is that doctors are beginning
to lose hope for his full recovery.
His heart reportedly had to be restarted twice, and his wife
of two years, Nalini, has kept a bedside vigil over the past
week.
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