(December 10, 2025)

Asked Sun­day about the “dou­ble tap” strike, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had asked for more time to re­search the mat­ter.

Asked again yes­ter­day out­side the Par­lia­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter said, “I don’t see how it ap­plies to me or what it has to do with me or Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Unit­ed States is a sov­er­eign na­tion and they are free to ex­er­cise their sov­er­eign­ty in man­ners that they see or deem fit. I can­not be judge and ju­ry here to de­ter­mine whether they are right or whether they are wrong. Those are not with­in our ju­ris­dic­tion or my re­mit.”

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar main­tained that any ves­sel sail­ing with­out a na­tion­al flag risks be­ing clas­si­fied as a pi­rate ship and, as such, would not be en­ti­tled to the same pro­tec­tions af­ford­ed to le­git­i­mate mar­itime ves­sels.