Re­gion­al lead­ers have main­tained that any re­sponse to re­ports of Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties us­ing lethal force against sus­pect­ed drug-traf­fick­ing ves­sels in the Caribbean must be guid­ed by the rule of law and es­tab­lished le­gal process­es.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing fol­low­ing the 51st Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment in St Lu­cia yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Trinidad and To­ba­go has found no ev­i­dence to sup­port claims that na­tion­als of this coun­try were among those al­leged­ly killed dur­ing re­cent US mar­itime in­ter­dic­tions.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from a jour­nal­ist, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies had con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the al­le­ga­tions.