Gail Alexan­der

The fam­i­ly of one of the five T&T na­tion­als de­tained in Venezuela since March 2014 has ap­pealed to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for an ur­gent meet­ing con­cern­ing the de­tainees.

In a let­ter on Mon­day seek­ing the meet­ing, Saadi­qua Mo­hammed, wife of de­tainee Do­minic Piti­lal, told Row­ley:

"On the eve of the pass­ing of one of our for­mer prime min­is­ters, Mr Patrick Man­ning, many great things can be said about him but the greater pic­ture is that we will as­sume po­si­tion and one day we have to leave it but the ques­tion is how are we go­ing to leave?

"Are we go­ing to de­part with dig­ni­ty and grace or oth­er­wise? As a small voice from with­in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty I am ask­ing you to al­low your lega­cy to live on among the Mus­lims as a prime min­is­ter who stood for jus­tice, de­spite race and re­li­gion."

Is­lam­ic Front leader Umar Ab­dul­lah who has launched an ap­peal for Mus­lims to cam­paign to get the de­tainees freed, re­vealed Mo­hammed's re­quest.

The four oth­er T&T na­tion­als–Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bat­ters­by, Wade Charles and Les­ley Dais­ley–were de­tained in Venezuela in March 2014 on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism.

Fol­low­ing a May meet­ing be­tween Row­ley and Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro, Gov­ern­ment asked Venezuela to ex­pe­dite the is­sue con­cern­ing the men. The ter­ror­ism charges were sub­se­quent­ly dropped but the men were put on two charges of in­tent to com­mit es­pi­onage and to com­mit a crime.

Ab­dul­lah said they went to court around ear­ly Ju­ly but there had been no head­way. The men were not plead­ing guilty to the two charges, he stressed. Fam­i­lies of the men, ini­tial­ly buoyed by the T&T/Venezuela meet­ing, had ex­pect­ed their re­lease but are now dispir­it­ed at the new charges.

Piti­lal's wife, Mo­hammed, in her let­ter to Row­ley, added:

It's been two years and four months they were in­car­cer­at­ed with­out charges. I'm plead­ing with you to have a brief meet­ing with the fam­i­ly mem­bers of these men so we can fur­ther dis­cuss what is Gov­ern­ment's next move in se­cur­ing the re­lease of our cit­i­zens.

"We are aware of the May 2016 meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro and your­self. You made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment of the repa­tri­a­tion of pris­on­ers. It has been two months now and we the fam­i­ly mem­bers are left in the dark as to what is the next move by the two gov­ern­ments. I am seek­ing this meet­ing with you so you can up­date and give us some sort of an­swers."

Mo­hammed added: "We, the fam­i­ly mem­bers, have suf­fered a great or­deal with this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, a glim­mer of hope has shined on us, the fam­i­ly mem­bers, when you as­sumed of­fice. Please do not al­low that hope to turn in­to de­spair. I am ea­ger­ly await­ing a pos­i­tive re­sponse from you."