Ot­to Car­ring­ton

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne says the 2018 Nightin­gale Com­mit­tee is still work­ing on for­mu­lat­ing plans to repa­tri­ate Tri­ni na­tion­als in Iraq, Syr­ia and Turkey.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain Of­fice yes­ter­day, Dr Browne said, “The Nightin­gale team, which is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary team with some strong com­po­si­tion from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs, Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, which has been look­ing at the over­all frame­work, there’s work still go­ing on, on the leg­isla­tive frame­work, all of which will come to­geth­er to en­sure that, in the end, the hu­man­i­tar­i­an, the gen­uine hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­cerns at play here, are prop­er­ly and re­spon­si­bly ad­dressed, but al­so the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the very re­al na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues are al­so prop­er­ly ad­dressed,” Browne said.

He al­so made it clear that the three-man com­mit­tee re­cent­ly ap­point­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, led by for­mer House speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, is not a re­place­ment to the Nightin­gale body but an ad­di­tion.

“So, that team is still hard at work and has not been sub­sti­tut­ed by Mr Mo­hammed’s three. You’d be aware that the lead, Mr Nizam Mo­hammed, and the oth­er two mem­bers, have been en­gaged in those ar­eas of di­a­logue, mak­ing those con­nec­tions, al­so seek­ing to har­vest spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion that can as­sist us in the phased repa­tri­a­tion of some of these in­di­vid­u­als,” Browne said.

“The work of those two groups is de­signed to cul­mi­nate in the end with the suc­cess­ful ad­dress of the hu­man­i­tar­i­an, as well as the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. So, the work on the leg­isla­tive front is go­ing on. I can tell you, and a lot of diplo­ma­cies is done out­side of the glare of pub­lic minu­ti­ae, but I can tell you that a lot of diplo­mat­ic work is oc­cur­ring all in at en­sur­ing that the na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go goes about this process ef­fec­tive­ly and re­spon­si­bly.”

The Nightin­gale team is a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and mul­ti-agency team in charge of the repa­tri­a­tion and rein­te­gra­tion of T&T na­tion­als cur­rent­ly de­tained in Syr­ia and Iraq. Over 100 na­tion­als are in these coun­tries af­ter join­ing the Is­lam­ic State (ISIS) caus­es years ago.

Mean­while, Browne al­so urged UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly to ex­er­cise cau­tion on his planned trip to Syr­ia for a fact-find­ing mis­sion on Tri­nis there.

“I would be very con­cerned about any in­di­vid­ual at­tempts to go off in­to a chal­leng­ing part of the world in a man­ner that may not be prop­er­ly planned or well sup­port­ed,” Browne said.

“The en­deav­ours that we are un­der­tak­ing, there is co­or­di­na­tion with the gov­ern­ment of Turkey, the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia, the In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross, el­e­ments at the Unit­ed Na­tions, and oth­er fo­rums to en­sure that every step that we take is the best pos­si­ble step, and of course, with due con­sid­er­a­tion for the safe­ty of our of­fi­cials and of­fi­cers as well.

“If any na­tion­al wish­es to go to any des­ti­na­tion around the world, there would be some lev­el of in­di­vid­ual choice in the mat­ter. I would hope the in­ten­tions are the no­blest, but at the same time, there is a dan­ger when af­fairs of state are be­ing treat­ed with.”