Venezue­lan pi­rates who op­er­ate out of Patos Is­land, one of Venezuela’s small un­in­hab­it­ed is­land, have re­port­ed­ly kid­napped three Ica­cos fish­er­men for ran­som.

The is­land is lo­cat­ed in the north­west­ern Gulf of Paria and is said to be one of the hide­outs for des­per­ate Venezue­lan pi­rates who kid­nap and smug­gle drugs and guns in ex­change for ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties. Up to late yes­ter­day, ne­go­ti­a­tions were on­go­ing and rel­a­tives re­mained tight-lipped say­ing they had no in­for­ma­tion to give. Last night sec­re­tary of Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud said a US$10,000 has been de­mand­ed for their safe re­lease.

Po­lice said the fish­er­men Ramkissoon Har­richa­ran, 64, Car­lo Snei­der, 61, of Lovers Lane, Ica­cos and a third uniden­ti­fied man were snatched at gun­point around 7 am while they fished off Gal­fa Point in Ica­cos about half a mile from the shore. A fish­er­man who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said he saw the Venezue­lan pi­rates ac­com­pa­nied by oth­er lo­cal Trinida­di­ans chas­ing down fish­ing ves­sels.

“We ran from them be­cause we re­al­ized they were pi­rates and they were com­ing to get our en­gines and nets,” the fish­er­man said. An­oth­er fish­ing crew from Erin was al­so pur­sued by the pi­rates. They even­tu­al­ly cap­tured the two old fish­er­men and took them aboard their pirogue. Two boat en­gines were tak­en and Snider’s boat Ger­man 1 was left adrift.(Stabroeknews)…[+]