JENSEN LA VENDESe­nior Re­porterjensen.lavende@guardian.co.ttThe moth­er of Chad “Char­po” Joseph, one of two lo­cal men killed in a US airstrike sup­pos­ed­ly tar­get­ing nar­co-traf­fick­ers, says she is putting the Gov­ern­ment in God’s hands.Her son and an­oth­er man, iden­ti­fied as Richie Sama­roo, were killed in the fifth airstrike last Tues­day. Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­it­er­at­ed the coun­try’s sup­port for the at­tacks, which many have de­scribed as ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings.In a state­ment on Sun­day, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs af­firmed that the US op­er­a­tions were not in­tend­ed to tar­get law-abid­ing peo­ple, in­clud­ing fish­er­folk and oth­er sea­far­ers try­ing to earn an hon­est liv­ing.The min­istry al­so re­ferred to a re­cent re­lease from the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com), stat­ing that the US op­er­a­tions—sup­pos­ed­ly aimed at com­bat­ing nar­co- and hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er forms of transna­tion­al crime—are ul­ti­mate­ly in­tend­ed to al­low the re­gion to be­come a true “Zone of Peace.”The US con­duct­ed its first airstrike on Sep­tem­ber 2 in the south­ern Caribbean, af­ter de­ploy­ing sev­er­al naval ships to the re­gion. So far, 32 peo­ple have been killed in sev­en lethal at­tacks by the US, which aims to dis­man­tle drug-traf­fick­ing net­works. The Gov­ern­ment has backed the US ac­tion, with Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­port­ed­ly urg­ing the US to deal with sus­pect­ed drug smug­glers “vi­o­lent­ly.”When asked about the Gov­ern­ment’s stance, Burn­ley said: “I am leav­ing them in God’s hands. I not think­ing too much nah!”She added that, while she does not want to be­lieve her son was killed, she is as­sured that if he were alive, he would have con­tact­ed the fam­i­ly by now. She said she was in­formed of his death through phone calls from those who knew him.Burn­ley al­so spoke about a pho­to­graph of her son cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, show­ing Joseph and two oth­ers be­ing ar­rest­ed. She said he was not held for traf­fick­ing nar­cotics, but for am­mu­ni­tion, and that the mat­ter is still on­go­ing.Rel­a­tives said Joseph worked as a fish­er­man.The moth­er said a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for Joseph will be held at his grand­moth­er’s res­i­dence on Wednes­day evening.