Rhon­dor Dowlat

Af­ter be­ing de­tained for 16 months by Sau­di Ara­bi­an of­fi­cials on sus­pi­cion of ter­ror­ism, T&T stu­dent Tariq Mo­hammed, 31, was freed and al­lowed to re­turn home.

Mo­hammed, son of Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion 106.1 FM ra­dio net­work host Shamoon Mo­hammed re­turned home on Thurs­day.

Mo­hammed, a fi­nal year stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Med­i­nah, was de­tained by Sau­di na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials on Au­gust 21, 2015 as he re­turned to that coun­try af­ter va­ca­tion­ing in T&T.

He was in the com­pa­ny of his wife, Saudah Ali and 16-month ba­by, Su­laimaan at the time. His wife and child were even­tu­al­ly al­lowed to re­turn to their apart­ment.

A num­ber of rel­a­tives in­clud­ing his fa­ther, his broth­er, sis­ter-in-law and at­tor­ney, Nafeesa Mo­hammed went to the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to wel­come him home.

Emo­tions ran high when Mo­hammed walked out of the air­port.

Rel­a­tives said his ar­rival in­to T&T was a smooth process and he was not kept back for any sort of ques­tion­ing or in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

As he left the air­port, Mo­hammed's first stop was at the Mo­hammedville home of his grand­moth­er, Ameer­an, 89, who was shocked when he walked in.

"First I saw Shamoon walk in­to my bed­room and then af­ter I saw this tall man walk in af­ter and I want­ed to know who is that com­ing in my bed­room on­ly to re­alise that it was Tariq. He hugged me for long and he cried and I cried," Ameer­an said.

"I am very hap­py to see him. No one told me he was com­ing on Thurs­day. I was ex­pect­ing for him to come home since Oc­to­ber but I didn't hear any­thing," she said.

Ameer­an, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that she thought she would have nev­er seen her grand­son again.

"Sau­di, those peo­ple over there don't bite easy and I re­al­ly didn't think I would have ever seen him again but thanks to Al­lah he is back home. I am noth­ing else but hap­py to see him."

Through­out Tariq's de­ten­tion in Sau­di, Shamoon main­tained his son's in­no­cence say­ing that Tariq has dili­gent­ly pur­sued his course of stud­ies re­ceiv­ing good grades and has nev­er left Sau­di Ara­bia to go to any oth­er Mid­dle East­ern coun­try dur­ing his stay there.

Shamoon al­so main­tained that his son was not in­volved in any neg­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties there and has been a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen through­out his life.