Geisha Kow­lessar

As nine T&T na­tion­als were ex­pect­ed to be de­port­ed late yes­ter­day for al­leged­ly try­ing to trav­el to Syr­ia to join the ter­ror group, Is­lam­ic State, al­so known as Isis, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi is as­sur­ing the na­tion that the men, like any oth­er de­por­tees, will be kept un­der strict sur­veil­lance. He added that ev­i­dence was cur­rent­ly be­ing gath­ered to de­ter­mine what pos­si­ble charges they may face.

He said these could range from fac­ing a jail term, heavy sanc­tions and for­fei­ture of as­sets.

"At the end of the day any­body in an al­leged cir­cum­stance of ter­ror­ism has to face the courts. There is due process and it must be done fair­ly but at the same time you have to take an in­tel­li­gence-based ap­proach to this," the AG said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the Dai­ly Sabah, the men were nabbed by Turk­ish of­fi­cials in Adana, while trav­el­ling in a truck on Ju­ly 27.

The truck was stopped by po­lice act­ing on a tip-off that "for­eign­ers" were said to be en route to join the ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion ac­tive in Syr­ia and Iraq.

The news­pa­per said As­sem Has­seno, a Syr­i­an sus­pect ac­cused of trans­port­ing uniden­ti­fied Trinida­di­ans to Syr­ia, was al­so de­tained. Has­seno was re­mand­ed in cus­tody.

Adana is among the cities near the Syr­i­an bor­der where for­eign fight­ers at­tempt to il­le­gal­ly cross to join Isis, oth­er­wise known as Daesh.

The re­port said Turkey, which shares a lengthy bor­der with Syr­ia, is pop­u­lar among Daesh's for­eign re­cruits from all across the globe al­though this was like­ly the first time for cit­i­zens of T&T.

Since 2011, Turkey has de­port­ed more than 3,290 for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers from 95 coun­tries and re­fused 38,269 in­di­vid­u­als en­try to Turkey in its fight against Daesh, which counts the Mus­lim-ma­jor­i­ty coun­try among its en­e­mies, the re­port said.

It added that Daesh was re­spon­si­ble for a string of ter­ror at­tacks in Ankara and Is­tan­bul, as well as cross-bor­der fire from Syr­ia that has killed a num­ber of res­i­dents since last year in Turk­ish bor­der towns.

Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day Isis was list­ed in the lo­cal courts as an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised ter­ror group. Hence, if this coun­try's cit­i­zens were found out­side of T&T at­tempt­ing to en­gage with the group the lo­cal law au­to­mat­i­cal­ly would take ef­fect.

He said there were 74 oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist groups which were cur­rent­ly be­ing list­ed be­fore T&T's courts. "If we see some­body is go­ing off to join Isis...But what is Isis in our laws? They have to be list­ed as one of the steps need­ed to build your case to get­ting these peo­ple be­fore the court and to have any at­tempt to ap­ply the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act suc­cess­ful­ly," Al-Rawi said.

He said if the ev­i­dence there­fore proved there was a link be­tween the nine de­por­tees and Isis then the laws would be ap­plied un­der the act.

Leg­is­la­tion, he added, was al­so cur­rent­ly be­fore the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer, all of whom still had to re­port back on how to deal with re­turn­ing for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers.

This piece of law was ex­pect­ed to be be­fore the Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber, Al-Rawi added.

"This piece of leg­is­la­tion would be a com­bi­na­tion of events that is the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the ex­ist­ing law which is the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act and the is­sue of how one treats with the re­turn of for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers through our coun­try or through co­or­di­nate coun­tries that they may pass through in tran­sit. "That one is near com­ple­tion and just re­quires the feed­back from those three agen­cies," Al-Rawi said.

And amid grow­ing con­cerns from mem­bers of the pub­lic that more and more Trinida­di­ans who were bent on tak­ing up Isis's cause were be­ing shipped back to this coun­try, Al-Rawi said in­tel­li­gence agen­cies were keep­ing a close watch on them.

He sought to al­le­vi­ate the fears of cit­i­zens say­ing that such agen­cies were hav­ing dis­cus­sions with in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.

"This is not a new phe­nom­e­non. We have been en­gaged in coun­ter­part dis­cus­sions with our es­tab­lished part­ners and al­so with the gov­ern­ment of Turkey it­self," Al-Rawi said.

He said var­i­ous in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies have been "watch­ing T&T" and mon­i­tor­ing its ef­fec­tive­ness by re­quest­ing proof that this coun­try's laws were ac­tu­al­ly be­ing used.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing

On con­cerns that the de­por­tees may form their own gangs the AG said the coun­cil met on Sun­day and ef­forts were be­ing made to "tight­en up" the re­sponse to such is­sues.

"We have very ro­bust and ac­tive sur­veil­lance mea­sures in T&T through var­i­ous agen­cies. That means you would have to have your in­tel­li­gence not on­ly con­vert­ed to in­for­ma­tion but ev­i­dence and that is the first step to en­sure you have things that are ac­tion­able," Al-Rawi said.

But the cur­rent An­ti-Gang and Bail Leg­is­la­tion is set to ex­pire on Au­gust 15, 2016.

He said the AG's of­fice was hav­ing on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence unit and with oth­er agen­cies to pro­duce the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to have pub­lic dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the fu­ture of an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion.

"It is more than just sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion. We now have to look to cause and ef­fect, not on­ly what you have achieved but what you have avoid­ed by way of util­i­sa­tion of these laws.

"You have to look at how these sta­tis­tics trans­late in­to the crime pat­terns and ac­tiv­i­ties from an in­tel­li­gence per­spec­tive" and that work is un­der­way, Al-Rawi said, adding that sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ments have al­ready been made.

He said up­on land­ing at Pi­ar­co Air­port, all de­por­tees were met by law en­force­ment agen­cies fol­low­ing which an en­tire de­brief­ing process took place.

"If there is any­thing un­to­ward, the steps are tak­en right then and there by the agen­cies tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ing the po­lice and I can as­sure that the per­sons who are de­port­ed are kept un­der suit­able sur­veil­lance as the case may dic­tate," Al-Rawi added.

Mus­lims con­cerned

Dr Nass­er Mustapha, ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Mus­lim League (TML), said he was con­cerned that T&T na­tion­als were still join­ing Isis.

He said he thought by now they would have had enough sense to re­frain from do­ing so.

"They should be aware by now that what Isis is do­ing is not in keep­ing with the teach­ings of Is­lam. All forms of vi­o­lence and ex­trem­ism are against the teach­ings of Is­lam. "When we see the things they are do­ing and loss of in­no­cent lives and the in­sta­bil­i­ty they are caus­ing I am sur­prised that peo­ple still want to go there," Mustapha said.

MORE IN­FO

A re­port from an­oth­er Syr­i­an news­pa­per yes­ter­day said the T&T na­tion­als were re­ferred to the Adana Im­mi­gra­tion Au­thor­i­ty Di­rec­torate for de­por­ta­tion. But Im­mi­gra­tions of­fi­cials were un­able to say when they would be de­port­ed as there was no di­rect flight to Pi­ar­co Air­port.

It said the men would have to go through Lon­don or Am­s­ter­dam but nei­ther of these cities was will­ing to ac­com­mo­date the de­por­ta­tion.

The Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties were li­ais­ing with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials in Trinidad in an ef­fort to re­solve the mat­ter and were ask­ing the T&T au­thor­i­ties to mon­i­tor the ar­rival of these Trinida­di­ans when­ev­er they were de­port­ed, the re­port said. Some of these Trinida­di­ans re­port­ed­ly left Trinidad, flew to Cara­cas, then land­ed in Am­s­ter­dam where they met their con­tact per­son.

The re­port said in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the de­tained Trinida­di­ans wor­shipped at mosques in cen­tral Trinidad, Rio Claro, and San­gre Grande.

No weapons were seized from the Trinida­di­ans but they were ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly armed once they reached Syr­ia, the re­port added.

Turkey has been on high alert af­ter be­ing rocked by a se­ries of sui­cide and car bomb at­tacks that have claimed many lives and wound­ed hun­dreds. The at­tacks were claimed by the ji­hadist group.

On June 28, at least 44 peo­ple were killed and hun­dreds were wound­ed in a sui­cide bomb at­tack at Is­tan­bul's Atat�rk Air­port blamed on Isis.

Eu­rope has been at­tacked by Isis in re­cent months in­clud­ing France and Bel­gium.