Kali­fa Clyne

Do­minic Piti­lal, al­so known as Ja­mal, is a fam­i­ly man. Ac­cord­ing to his broth­er Hamza, Ja­mal worked hard through­out the week, prayed at a mosque in Diego Mar­tin and took out­ings with his wife and chil­dren on week­ends. The Co­corite man was tak­en from his home on Thurs­day by po­lice of­fi­cers. He, along with 15 oth­ers, have been de­tained un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions. They are as­sist­ing au­thor­i­ties with an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged plot to desta­bilise the coun­try and as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and three of her Cab­i­net mem­bers - At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma.

In an in­ter­view out­side of Ja­mal's Au­to Tech Lim­it­ed yes­ter­day, the busi­ness owned and run by Piti­lal, Hamza lament­ed the de­ten­tion of his broth­er. Piti­lal's busi­ness is sit­u­at­ed on the com­pound of Mo­hammed's Hard­ware, West­ern Main Road, Co­corite. His wife works at the hard­ware store and is a rel­a­tive of the own­ers. His broth­er de­scribed him as a hard-work­ing man, who slaved away at his busi­ness from Mon­day to Fri­day. "It came as a com­plete shock to us. Last Thurs­day af­ter lunch he said he was feel­ing sick and went home. A lit­tle af­ter 4 pm I got a call from his wife telling us that po­lice came for him," said Hamza. Hamza said he could not think of a rea­son why the po­lice would de­tain his broth­er but not­ed they had been "mark­ing him since 2001" af­ter he went to make Haaj, an an­nu­al pil­grim­age to the Is­lam­ic Mec­ca.

Piti­lal's wife chose not to com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day and in­stead re­ferred all ques­tions to his lawyer Pamela El­der SC. In Co­corite, res­i­dents ex­pressed gen­uine con­fu­sion as to the iden­ti­ty of Piti­lal. One res­i­dent said: "We just start ask­ing each oth­er who is that man. We say it had to be a mis­take be­cause I know every­body up here and I don't know who is that man." From Wa­ter­hole to Hard­ing Place and Sug­ar Hill, no­body seemed to know who Piti­lal was. Re­spons­es ranged from "I think it have some Piti­lal's on the next side" to "nah they make a mis­take" and "he prob­a­bly give them a wrong ad­dress".

Mean­while, on Williams Street, El Soc­cor­ro Road, San Juan, res­i­dents were tight-lipped and sus­pi­cious of ques­tions re­gard­ing an­oth­er de­tainee, Ja­son Brown, al­so known as Ab­dool Ka­reem. Very few peo­ple seemed to know of Brown's ex­is­tence and those who did di­rect­ed ques­tions to the mosque where Brown was said to wor­ship dai­ly with his fam­i­ly. One group of young men on a cor­ner said they knew where he lived but feared for their lives if they talked. "Fam­i­ly, I would tell you, but then you might read about me and my part­ners get­ting mur­dered af­ter," he said. An­oth­er man said he knew who Brown was but he lived on an­oth­er street.