Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has called on his suc­ces­sor Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon to pro­tect T&T and ve­to moves to al­low the re­turn of na­tion­als, now with fight­ing with the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS).

Grif­fith wants Dil­lon to pass any lists of such peo­ple Dil­lon may re­ceive to T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies.

He made the call yes­ter­day af­ter Is­lam­ic Front founder Umar Ab­dul­lah said he would be lob­by­ing Dil­lon at a meet­ing next Tues­day to al­low the re­turn of T&T-born for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers (FTFs) and as­sist their rein­te­gra­tion.

He said fol­low­ing re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing the Paris at­tacks and oth­er crises in­volv­ing ter­ror­ist at­tacks, he re­ceived a call from Dil­lon's sec­re­tary ear­ly last week seek­ing a meet­ing this week. Ab­dul­lah said she called back to post­pone the meet­ing to next week Tues­day.

Dil­lon in the Sen­ate last week said a dis­cus­sion was tak­ing place with­in Gov­ern­ment on re­vis­it­ing or chang­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of free, un­re­strict­ed/un­hin­dered en­try of T&T na­tion­als (FTFs) who have joined the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS)

Yes­ter­day, Ab­dul­lah said that in hint­ing at that po­si­tion, Gov­ern­ment may have been throw­ing the is­sue out to the pub­lic to get feed­back.

He said he in­tend­ed to bring to the ta­ble with Dil­lon, an al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tion as op­posed to block­ing FTFs. He said he would in­sist that Gov­ern­ment must "un­der­stand the po­si­tion of the unit­ed po­si­tion of the Mus­lim peo­ple of T&T."

Ab­dul­lah added: "We do have con­cerns that they (FTFs) may re­turn with is­sues and we may have neg­a­tive fall-out as a re­sult but we are pre­pared to work, to change, ed­u­cate them and put them through a rein­te­gra­tion pro­gramme.

"There's no guar­an­tee they are go­ing to re­turn with that (ISIS) ide­ol­o­gy, or in­ten­tion to change their old out­look on fight­ing ji­had but these peo­ple are cit­i­zens of T&T and Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its cit­i­zens, ir­re­gard­less (sic), to get ideas and in­no­v­a­tive strate­gies on how to deal with these sit­u­a­tions."

He called on Gov­ern­ment not to "take on the west­ern press and west­ern na­tions."

Ab­dul­lah said he in­tend­ed to take his po­si­tion on the is­sue to Sat­ur­day's up­com­ing meet­ing of Mus­lim lead­ers be­ing worked out by the En­ter­prise masjid on the ISIS is­sue and its im­pact on T&T.

Last week­end, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty was ad­dressed on the Mus­lim IBN chan­nel on this fol­low­ing a call (via IBN) for all Mus­lim lead­ers to hold an emer­gency meet­ing on the is­sue.

Taulib Seales of the En­ter­prise masjid, who con­firmed the move, said it was planned that a press con­fer­ence would be held af­ter that meet­ing on a joint po­si­tion. Seales said Mus­lim lead­ers were be­ing asked to meet and open a di­a­logue.

Ab­dul­lah said at his up­com­ing meet­ing with Dil­lon he al­so planned to call for ac­tion on the five T&T na­tion­als cur­rent­ly de­tained in Venezuela on al­leged ter­ror­ist charges for the past 17 months.

Ab­dul­lah said he would al­so seek ac­tion on the sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing Tariq Shamoon Mo­hammed, de­tained in Sau­di Ara­bia since Au­gust.

How­ev­er, the Ab­dul­lah/Dil­lon meet­ing came in for crit­i­cism from Grif­fith, who queried the view the FTFs should be giv­en a sec­ond chance.

He said: "A sec­ond chance at what, try­ing to cause a plague by at­tempt­ing to lure more na�ve young men to be­come FTFs, or ac­tu­al­ly com­mit some ter­ror­ist act in our coun­try based on train­ing they re­ceived in Syr­ia?

"Hope­ful­ly that list of 75-odd per­sons Mr Ab­dul­lah has sub­mit­ted to Min­is­ter Dil­lon, should im­me­di­ate­ly be hand­ed over to our in­ter­na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence al­lies and if in­tel­li­gence has con­firmed these per­sons were FTFs, then they would and should be red-flagged, up­on which be­ing black­list­ed to board any flight and hence nev­er see T&T.

"Thank­ful­ly, both Min­is­ter Dil­lon and Mr Ab­dul­lah are to­tal­ly in­cor­rect if they per­ceive be­cause some­one is a T&T cit­i­zen, they can au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be au­tho­rised to re-en­ter, re­gard­less if they are linked to ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty."

Grif­fith said there was a win­dow which could pre­vent them from re­turn­ing. He not­ed T&T's sign­ing of the Unit­ed Na­tions Res­o­lu­tion on the ISIS is­sue last year has man­dat­ed ful­fill­ment of var­i­ous oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing deny­ing ter­ror­ists the abil­i­ty to put down roots, build a base and es­tab­lish safe havens, pre­vent easy ac­cess of trav­el for FTFs and pre­vent rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion for the re­cruit­ing of FTFs.

"Based on re­cent hor­rif­ic acts of ter­ror­ism glob­al­ly and rev­e­la­tions of dozens of T&T FTFs it's ev­i­dent cer­tain mea­sures must be tak­en to pre­vent such acts lo­cal­ly.

"Every­one de­serves a sec­ond chance, how­ev­er, not ter­ror­ists. The rights of those few who be­came ter­ror­ists and want to re­turn could nev­er su­per­sede the rights of the many T&T cit­i­zens." (See Page 6)