Geisha Kow­lessar

The chants of the Mus­lim women were loud­er than those of the men as they de­mand­ed an im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion by the T&T Gov­ern­ment to have the eight T&T Mus­lim men freed from a Venezue­lan prison.The group, which ap­peared more vo­cif­er­ous than the day be­fore, con­sist­ed most­ly of women and chil­dren, who lined the pave­ment out­side the Venezue­lan Em­bassy at Vic­to­ria Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.They were sup­port­ed by Ruth Al­bor­noz of the group Venezue­lans in T&T.

Al­bor­noz said the plight of the de­tained Mus­lims echoed the hard­ships of the Venezue­lan peo­ple, who have no ac­cess to ba­sic com­modi­ties, in­clud­ing toi­let pa­per."Venezue­lans share a kind of sen­ti­ment in a way that we are liv­ing this kind of thing. Our stu­dents are be­ing tor­tured, be­ing abused, be­ing raped...we are de­fend­ing hu­man rights."We don't care about be­ing from any re­li­gion, whether Mus­lims (or not). If your rights were vi­o­lat­ed, our rights are be­ing vi­o­lat­ed right now as we speak in Venezuela," Al­bor­noz said.

A teacher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), Al­bor­noz said she fled Venezuela some 12 years ago and made this coun­try her home.She al­so called on the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment to apol­o­gise to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty for treat­ment of the de­tainees.If the mat­ter goes to a tri­bunal, Al­bor­noz said, there was the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Mus­lims would not get a fair hear­ing.Lo­cal Mus­lim groups have knocked Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona for stand­ing idly by and do­ing noth­ing.

Hisham Muham­mad Has­san said it ap­peared Car­mona cared more for gi­raffes than for cit­i­zens, a ref­er­ence to the Pres­i­dent's pub­lic con­cern over the culling of a gi­raffe in Den­mark in Feb­ru­ary."My con­cern is not on­ly for the imams, but there are about 50 to 60 peo­ple who in­vest­ed mon­ey to vis­it the holy land. All that is jump­ing up now all be­cause peo­ple are held un­der a sit­u­a­tion with no ev­i­dence," Has­san said.

The de­tained men, who in­clude three well re­spect­ed imams from masjids in T&T, were due to vis­it Sau­di Ara­bia on an Um­rah trip to Mec­ca last Tues­day.They had 60 pass­ports with them and US$102,000 in cash, which was seized. They were held at the Plaza Ho­tel, Sa­bana Grande in down­town Cara­cas.

TRI­BUNAL JUST A RU­MOUR

In­shan Ish­mael of the Mus­lim So­cial and Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion said state­ments that the eight were sup­posed to ap­pear be­fore a Venezue­lan tri­bunal were a ru­mour.Ish­mael said he has been keep­ing in touch with the men by phone and they had no knowl­edge of this."We were in­formed di­rect­ly from them that they have not ap­peared be­fore any tri­bunal. Their at­tor­neys are not aware of any tri­bunal, and it looks as if this is­sue is to be dragged on for the next 45 days.

"We will con­tin­ue to fight to en­sure they are freed," Ish­mael said.

WE DID ALL WE COULD: GARY

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had been do­ing every­thing that was diplo­mat­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to as­sist the eight de­tained men.He said Venezuela's jus­tice sys­tem must be re­spect­ed."In sim­i­lar man­ner, if any­thing hap­pens with our law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, and our of­fi­cials ar­rest any­one from an­oth­er coun­try, that coun­try ob­vi­ous­ly has to un­der­stand and re­spect the au­thor­i­ty of T&T, based on what may have hap­pened.

"So it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for us to do more than we can and should do," Grif­fith said.