THEY may be World Cup rivals, but off the pitch the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has teamed up with England to try to kick crime out of the Caribbean.

The Government of the former Crown colony is spending £13 million over the next three years on hiring 39 serving and retired British police officers to bring their know-how to its outdated, struggling force.

Headed by Commander Ian Delbarre, who left the Metropolitan Police after 35 years to take the job, the team brings a wealth of experience in serious crime investigation to a country rife with gang activity, murder and kidnap.

Trinidad and Tobago, with a population of 1.3 million, had a record 386 murders last year, up 36 per cent on 2004. More than 75 per cent went unsolved.

“An island paradise? It’s the killing fields,” said Stephen Cadiz, a Trinidadian businessman and head of the Keith Noel 136 Committee, an anti-crime pressure group founded in memory of last year’s 136th murder victim.

There were a record 235 kidnappings last year, up nearly a third on 2004. Of the 12,919 complaints made against the police from 1999 to 2004, only 20 per cent were investigated, said Amnesty International.

Just seven miles from Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago is on the trafficking route between South America and North America and Europe. “When our country was first used as a trans-shipment point we ignored it because our people were not users of the drugs and guns being shipped. But then some of it started to remain here as part-payment,” said Martin Joseph, the Minister for National Security.

“As a result, our law enforcement got out of alignment . . . it seems for some people that crime is paying. Clearly we needed assistance.”

The British team, drawn from the Met, West Midlands, Wiltshire, Leicestershire and Dorset, are training their counterparts in fields such as intelligence tactics and crime scene management. “We’re turning a tanker,” said Commander Delbarre, 54, whose previous investigations included the Victoria Climbié child abuse case in London. “Do I think three years is enough? No. But big things will get done here.”

It is not the first time that the Caribbean has called on British police assistance. Last year Jamaica hired Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Shields, a former senior officer with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, to become deputy commissioner of the island’s police force on a three-year contract. He has since been joined by two other British officers. St Lucia and Guyana have also requested British officers.

Much of the violent crime is concentrated in ghettos around Port of Spain, the Trinidadian capital, where gangs vie for supremacy. But attacks on visitors to Tobago, which has most of the tourist trade, have caused the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to say in its travel advice: “The inability of local authorities to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators is a serious concern.”

In February alone, one Briton was stabbed, four were robbed in their villa by machete-wielding intruders and an 80-year-old British woman was raped.

The Keith Noel 136 Committee is holding a vote on whether citizens feel that their constitutional right to “life, liberty and security” has been violated by government inaction. Christine Hosein and her husband, Richard, have voted “yes”. Last year their son, Imran, 21, was kidnapped by men demanding a T$1 million (£85,000) ransom.

The Hoseins were astonished when police came to their house hours after Imran’s abduction to ask how much they would be paying. “The policemen said, ‘What about $10,000?’ I said I wouldn’t pay five cents. I knew there could be consequences, but these kidnappings have to stop,” Mrs Hosein said.

She received 16 calls from the kidnappers over 18 days. “They would threaten to chop off his head, or infect him with HIV. We love our son, but we had to make a stand,” she said.

Imran was kicked and had cigarettes stubbed out on his scalp. He was held for two weeks then forced up a mountain and buried in a hole. His ears, nose and weeping wounds became infested with maggots.

After four days he escaped and stumbled down the mountain. A passing motorist drove him to a police station. When he crawled up the steps, close to collapse, an officer berated him for not standing up. No one was ever charged with Imran’s kidnap.

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