Gail Alexan­der

The nine T&T na­tion­als de­tained in Turkey have not yet left there to re­turn home and they are still be­ing processed by Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon con­firmed yes­ter­day.

The Turkey Dai­ly Sabah re­cent­ly re­port­ed the nine were held in Turkey on Ju­ly 27 along with a Syr­i­an man who was tak­ing them, via truck, to Syr­ia for re­cruit­ment by Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (Isis) as for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers. It was stat­ed that the nine will be de­port­ed back to T&T. They are at Turkey's Adana de­ten­tion cen­tre.

The T&T Guardian re­ceived in­for­ma­tion the group in­clud­ed sev­er­al women and a young child as well as sev­er­al men.

Dil­lon did not con­firm or de­ny that but stressed Gov­ern­ment would be re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties once pro­cess­ing of the group was com­plet­ed and any moves to send them back to T&T be­gan.

He al­so con­firmed he was work­ing out arrange­ments to meet for talks with mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. That should be with­in the next cou­ple weeks, he added.

Fol­low­ing a call by a T&T-born Isis fight­er, Abu S'ad at-Trinida­di (re­port­ed­ly Shane Craw­ford), Dil­lon said in an ex­clu­sive Sun­day Guardian sto­ry he want­ed to meet with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to un­der­stand the mo­ti­va­tion and root caus­es of why peo­ple were leav­ing to join Isis.

A num­ber of Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, in­clud­ing at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed, last week­end in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est to meet with Dil­lon.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, back from va­ca­tion, al­so said yes­ter­day he was check­ing with the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs on the de­tained T&T nine in Turkey. Gov­ern­ment as­signed For­eign Af­fairs to deal with the mat­ter, via diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.

Al-Rawi is due to bring leg­is­la­tion ear­ly next month to Par­lia­ment to deal with re­turn­ing T&T ter­ror­ist fight­ers (FTFs). He had as­sured that sus­pect­ed lo­cal FTFs were un­der sur­veil­lance.

He told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day leg­is­lat­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion on ter­ror­ism, signed in 2014 by the past ad­min­is­tra­tion, was al­so high on Gov­ern­ment's agen­da.

Af­ter des­ig­nat­ing con­vict­ed JFK bomb plot­ter Ka­reem Ibrahim and Isis as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties un­der the an­ti-ter­ror­ism law the AG's of­fice on Ju­ly 25 ap­plied to the court for sim­i­lar de­c­la­ra­tions for 75 oth­er en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als.

He said the list in­volved four batch­es com­pris­ing 75 des­ig­nat­ed en­ti­ties as well as three in­di­vid­u­als. His of­fice is await­ing a court date for the mat­ter.

T&T does not yet fig­ure on the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil's list of en­ti­ties/per­sons deemed ter­ror­ists. That list will be up­dat­ed next month.