A diplomatic quarrel erupted at this week’s CARICOM summit after Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister publicly accused Barbados of facilitating what she described as the 2022 kidnapping of a Trinidadian citizen. Barbados swiftly rejected the charge, calling it defamatory and false.

At the center of the dispute is businessman and arms dealer Brent Thomas. In 2022, Thomas was detained in Barbados and returned to Trinidad in handcuffs. His transfer was reportedly carried out after Trinidadian police presented a warrant to Barbadian authorities.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the regional meeting in St. Kitts on Tuesday, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar said she remains troubled by the episode and by what she characterized as silence from the Guyana based CARICOM Secretariat. Calling the incident “deeply unsettling,” she said, “I have not had the response from the secretariat,” adding that perhaps “one ceases to be recognized by the secretariat as a member of CARICOM when not in government.”

Her remarks were delivered in the presence of Secretary General Carla Barnett and other regional leaders.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley responded forcefully: “To describe it as kidnapping or to suggest that any member of the 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.”

Mottley said arrest warrants were presented by Trinidad police to Barbados police and insisted her government had no operational role.

“As to what happened, we don’t know because we don’t get involved in operational matters,” she said, adding that an investigation was launched only after the issue became public.

Thomas had faced allegations of illegally possessing explosives discovered during a business audit. This week he said he wants clarity about what occurred four years ago. Mottley noted that the controversy underscores the need for a regional arrest warrant system.