Rhon­dor Dowlat

A hand­writ­ten let­ter penned by 11-year-old Za­kariya Piti­lal, of Co­corite, ad­dressed to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley begged him as head of the na­tion to have his fa­ther re­turned to him, his younger broth­ers and his moth­er.Za­kariya's broth­ers are Idris, nine, and Muhammed, three.

The let­ter was hand de­liv­ered on Tues­day to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.

Za­kariya's fa­ther, Do­minic Piti­lal, is one of five Trinida­di­ans de­tained in Venezuela since 2014 on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism. The oth­er de­tainees are Wade Charles, Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bat­ters­by and Leslie Daise­ly.

The let­ter, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 2, 2016, starts of by say­ing: "Good day Mr Kei­th Row­ley, the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of T&T. My name is Za­kariya Piti­lal. I am the el­dest son of Do­minic Piti­lal.

"My fa­ther and his friends have been locked up in Venezuela for two years and six months. Can you please help them?"

Za­kariya told Row­ley his fa­ther was very sick and was in need of med­ical at­ten­tion. He al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­lay the last con­ver­sa­tion he had with his fa­ther, who he said told him that he was now go­ing to en­gage in a hunger strike.

"The last time I spoke to him he told me that he was go­ing on a hunger strike and that I may nev­er see him again be­cause he will not stop un­til he is freed," Za­kariya said in the let­ter.He added that de­spite him be­ing on­ly 11 years old he be­lieved that he had a du­ty to help his fa­ther.

"I don't want my fa­ther and his friends to suf­fer any­more. Mr Row­ley, please, I am kind of beg­ging you to help my fa­ther, please," Za­kariya plead­ed.

"My fa­ther has been every­thing to me. Now I feel like I don't have any­thing," he added.

Za­kariya plead­ed with the Prime Min­is­ter not to ig­nore his let­ter:

"Can you please don't ig­nore my let­ter and my pain and the pain of my fa­ther. No one can even imag­ine what ef­fect this has on my broth­ers and moth­er. Can you please help put my fam­i­ly and the oth­er fam­i­lies back to­geth­er? I know you can do it."

The lit­tle boy's end­ed: "Thank You," along with his full name.Two months ago, on Ju­ly 11, 2016, Za­kariya's moth­er, Saadi­qua Mo­hammed, al­so sent a let­ter to Row­ley seek­ing a meet­ing with him.

Her let­ter stat­ed: "We are aware of the meet­ing that took place on May 23, 2016 with Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro and your­self.

"You made a pub­lic an­nounce­ment of the repa­tri­a­tion of pris­on­ers. It has been two months now and we 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."

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said she had not re­ceived any re­sponse from Row­ley about her let­ter.

Asked about her son's let­ter, Mo­hammed said she was moved in her heart by his in­ten­tion. She ad­mit­ted she did help him pen it but said that most of it came from his heart.

"In the be­gin­ning we tried to shield the kids from what was hap­pen­ing but we couldn't af­ter a while and Za­kariya is al­ways ask­ing for up­dates as to what is go­ing on," Mo­hammed said.She added she re­al­ly hoped Row­ley's heart would give in to her son's let­ter.

"I know there is a pro­to­col to go through be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter gets his let­ter but I hope that when he does that this brings hope by the grace of God," she added.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Umar Ab­dul­lah, Is­lam­ic Front leader, said there need­ed to be a def­i­nite an­swer on where the sit­u­a­tion had reached es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that all charges of ter­ror­ism and es­pi­onage had been dropped against the five de­tainees.He said he strong­ly be­lieved that there was no due process in the ju­di­cia­ry sys­tem in Venezuela.

"There are de­lays in giv­ing a ver­dict on the mat­ter right now but we have vowed to keep the pres­sure on. We will ral­ly sup­port from the en­tire na­tion be­hind us on this.

"Our na­tion­als are just im­por­tant as the ones who are feel­ing the ef­fects of Hur­ri­cane Matthew right now," Ab­dul­lah said.He al­so gave an ul­ti­ma­tum to Row­ley based on Za­kariya's let­ter. He said Row­ley should give a re­sponse to the boy's let­ter by to­day or the sit­u­a­tion would be made known to the In­ter­na­tion­al me­dia.

At re­cent talks in May be­tween T&T and Venezue­lan lead­ers, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials asked that the mat­ter be ex­pe­dit­ed dur­ing dis­cus­sions on repa­tri­a­tion of peo­ple de­tained in each oth­ers coun­try on im­mi­gra­tion is­sues.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials lat­er stressed the is­sue of the five men was in Venezuela's hands and sub­ject to its ju­di­cial sys­tem.