Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Shout­ing chants of Al­lahu Ak­bar, with tears stream­ing down his face and hug­ging his two sons, Do­minic Piti­lal was lost for words as he came out the ar­rival gate at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port a free man last night.

Piti­lal and Mus­lim broth­ers Wade Charles, Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bat­ters­by and Leslie Dais­ley had been ar­rest­ed and in­car­cer­at­ed for 32 months at the Se­bin fa­cil­i­ty in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism.

Wip­ing away tears from the eyes of his two el­der sons, Idris, nine, and Za­kariya, 11, Piti­lal said it was an emo­tion­al time for his fam­i­ly.

"I tried to pre­pare for this. Now I can't even talk, I am dumb­struck," he said.

Piti­lal did not go in­to de­tails about his in­car­cer­a­tion, but said he would re­veal all in time.

"I am go­ing to get to know my son," he said.

His last son, Muhamad, who was six months when he was ar­rest­ed with his com­pa­tri­ots in Venezuela, looked at his fa­ther with a blank stare on his face.

"Do you know me? Do you know who I am?" he asked his son, as Muhamad stared at him with no emo­tion.

"I am glad this is over. I just want to go home and be with my sons who I don't know. I want to be a fa­ther once more."

Piti­lal main­tained his in­no­cence, say­ing, "The whole world knew that we are in­no­cent. The judge told us that in Venezuela, that we are in­no­cent."

How­ev­er, while at least four of the men walked away free from the air­port last night, Charles was ar­rest­ed and de­tained by po­lice soon af­ter he was de­briefed by Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion.

Head of the Is­lam­ic Front Umar Ab­dul­lah said they re­tained an at­tor­ney to de­ter­mine on what grounds Charles was ar­rest­ed. How­ev­er, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands he was ar­rest­ed on an out­stand­ing war­rant.

Charles' moth­er, Glo­ria Charles, screamed and shout­ed un­der the watch­ful eye of armed po­lice of­fi­cers as she con­demned the ar­rest of her son on learn­ing of his ar­rest.

"I am fed up with this Gov­ern­ment," Charles said.

"These men are be­ing treat­ed as crim­i­nals. We are fac­ing op­pres­sion in this coun­try."

FOUR-HOUR IN­TER­RO­GA­TION

On Au­gust 27, the charges against the Trinida­di­an de­tainees were dropped and they re­turned home yes­ter­day around 2 pm, where they were de­tained and ques­tioned for four hours by Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

The de­ten­tion at the air­port caused tem­pers to flare out­side, as fam­i­ly mem­bers ob­ject­ed to them be­ing de­layed at the air­port.

Ex­press­ing dis­gust was Piti­lal's wife, Saadi­qua Mo­hammed, who de­scribed their de­ten­tion as ridicu­lous.

"They are say­ing that we are ter­ror­ists, but what they are do­ing these men here to­day is ter­ror­is­ing us. Enough is enough. Is three years we have been en­dur­ing this. This wait is longer than the three years."

She said she felt her hus­band would now be­come a tar­get for the po­lice.

She point­ed out that be­fore the state of emer­gency un­der the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, her hus­band was be­ing mon­i­tored by the po­lice. She said she did not ex­pect any­thing to change now.

Speak­ing briefly with the me­dia, Luq­man de­scribed his treat­ment in prison as "ter­ri­ble." He said one of the prob­lems that they faced in Venezuela was they could not get food to eat be­cause of a na­tion­al food short­age there due to on­go­ing eco­nom­ic woes.

"Now that I'm back home I'm look­ing for­ward to eat­ing a hot dou­bles."