Call for time-out on Anti-Terrorism Bill

Independent Senator Elton Prescott said yesterday there was no need for a rushed debate to secure passage of anti-terrorism legislation in T&T. Contributing to yesterday’s Senate debate on the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, Prescott said as far as he knew nobody was about to bomb T&T this weekend. He suggested passage of the legislation be achieved at much more leisurely fashion. “Nobody isn’t coming to blow up Trinidad this weekend, I think,” he added. He said the bill sought to continue along the trend of removing more civil liberties from the population. 

He agreed with Opposition Senator Faris Al-Rawi that the bill required a special three-fifths majority vote for passage. Opposition Senator Pennelope Beckles-Robinson said support for the legislation was assured. She expressed concerns about what was being put in place in T&T to monitor T&T terrorists who were being deported after serving sentences abroad. She quoted a publication in a Canadian newspaper in 2006.  She said the article named the Trinidad terrorists, who were linked to a Pakistani-based terrorist group, as Barry Adams, alias Tyronne Cole, and Waleem Mohammed, alias Robert Johnson.

She stressed the need for some system to be implemented to properly monitor all T&T terrorists and criminals who were continuously being deported by foreign Governments. Earlier Government Senator David Abdulah quoted newspaper reports which said he was being monitored by a police agency in 2009. He said Labour Minister Errol McLeod also was being spied upon by the security agency, called Regional Information Fusion Centre, a sub-agency of Caricom’s IMPACS.