Gail Alexan­der

The "red flag­ging" of T&T na­tion­als who went to ar­eas as­so­ci­at­ed with ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty is a nor­mal pro­ce­dure and is nec­es­sary for T&T to meet its oblig­a­tions un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions' an­ti-ter­ror­ism res­o­lu­tion, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says.

De­fend­ing Gov­ern­ment's move to "red flag" such per­sons, Al-Rawi, at yes­ter­day's week­ly gov­ern­ment me­dia brief­ing, said he un­der­stood con­cerns which have arisen in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty about it.

"I am Faris Al-Rawi," he added, "I have an Iraqi name. I have Mid­dle East roots al­so and I am cer­tain­ly very well ac­quaint­ed with the is­sue of red flag­ging... just hav­ing a name from the Mid­dle East and hav­ing fam­i­ly in the Mid­dle East can cause you to be the sub­ject of sec­ondary in­quiries in for­eign ju­ris­dic­tions.

"So I un­der­stand con­cerns but this is very much an in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tion. One must ac­cept the risk of go­ing to war-torn coun­tries or those who have as­so­ci­a­tions with known ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties," he added.

His com­ments arose fol­low­ing the is­sue re­sult­ing from UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal's state­ment in Par­lia­ment last week that 400 peo­ple have been in­doc­tri­nat­ed, rad­i­calised and trained by the Is­lam­ic State (Isis) and had gone to Syr­ia, in­clud­ing men, women and chil­dren.

A 2013-2015 se­cu­ri­ty re­port ob­tained by the T&T Guardian showed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 105 men, women and chil­dren list­ed as go­ing to Syr­ia to sup­port Isis over that pe­ri­od.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon lat­er said Gov­ern­ment would be "red flag­ging" those who had gone and al­so would mon­i­tor pil­grim­ages to track cul­prits who tried to use that as con­ceal trav­el to Syr­ia.

Yes­ter­day, one rep­re­sen­ta­tive went to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to book an ap­point­ment to speak with Dil­lon on the is­sue.

Al-Rawi ap­peared at Gov­ern­ment's sub­se­quent brief­ing to stress that Gov­ern­ment would be ap­ply­ing an­ti-ter­ror­ism laws, re­lat­ed leg­is­la­tion and pro­vi­sions of his of­fice as well as the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing pro­vi­sions. Al­so in his sights are ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing is­sues and pro­cess­ing the re­turn to T&T of ter­ror­ist fight­ers.

He said that would ap­ply in tak­ing is­sues to court and op­er­a­tional­is­ing ex­ist­ing laws. He said he had just re­turned from the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force's (CFATF) US meet­ing where such is­sues were dis­cussed. T&T heads CFATF.

When asked if Gov­ern­ment had num­bers on the peo­ple who would be mon­i­tored Al-Rawi replied: "We do..." He did not elab­o­rate.

Asked sub­se­quent­ly to say how many cur­rent­ly, he said he would have to check with Dil­lon. He didn't re­ply to a fol­low-up text. At the brief­ing, Al-Rawi said the "red flag­ging sto­ry" tran­scend­ed the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty since there were al­so for­eign­ers and Chris­tians at is­sue.

Say­ing "red flag­ging is an in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tion, he added: "We are oblig­ed to car­ry it out due to sup­port for the UN res­o­lu­tion (an­ti-ter­rorisms) 1278 and it's some­thing the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and oth­er agen­cies must keep un­der ac­tive su­per­vi­sion to en­sure due process is served

and in­for­ma­tion is man­aged ap­pro­pri­ate­ly."