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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

AG: Returning foreign terrorist fighters under security radar

by

2725 days ago
20180122

nadaleen.singh@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said amend­ments to leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with ter­ror­ism are ex­pect­ed to pre­sent­ed when the Par­lia­ment sits this week.

He said the amend­ments would in­clude rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (CFATF), In­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment bod­ies and in­for­ma­tion from court cas­es.

Stat­ing that gov­ern­ment has a no-tol­er­ance ap­proach to ter­ror­ism, he said al­ready his of­fice has com­piled a list com­pris­ing of 353 per­sons in­volved in ter­ror­ism, a list which he said the Op­po­si­tion was nev­er able to com­pile be­fore.

Al-Rawi’s com­ments come as fam­i­lies who jour­neyed to Syr­ia and Iraq join­ing ter­ror­ist group-ISIS are re­turn­ing home.

Leg­is­la­tion on the Or­der Pa­per in­cludes : ‘An Act to amend the Mu­tu­al As­sis­tance in Crim­i­nal Mat­ters Act, the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act, the Cus­toms Act and the Ex­change Con­trol Act.’

Asked what sys­tems are in place to pre­vent peo­ple who are re­turn­ing to T&T af­ter get­ting train­ing from ISIS to start ter­ror­ist groups, he as­sured there is a sys­tem in place which in­volve a num­ber of fac­tors.

He said law en­force­ment agen­cies in T&T are al­ready mon­i­tor­ing the peo­ple who re­turned from the “high-risk” ar­eas.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi said, “In fact, very short­ly we would be tabling in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, amend­ments to An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act to specif­i­cal­ly speak to this. That is not to say, that op­er­a­tional­ly this kind of work does not go on.”

“You will note that the Of­fice of the AG which runs the civ­il side of the equa­tion, has been ex­treme­ly busy in the list­ing of ter­ror­ism en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als, where­as un­der the UNC there were no list­ings what­so­ev­er. We have tak­en that list­ing-base up to 353 and I can tell you, there are more list­ings and more in­ves­ti­ga­tion afoot.”

He added that the Gov­ern­ment amend­ed the spe­cial en­ti­ty that falls un­der the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Ser­vices Act and this cov­ers a broad range of events re­ferred to as se­ri­ous crime and an­ti-ter­ror­ism work.

Asked whether mon­i­tor­ing peo­ple who re­turned from ISIS would be dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, Al-Rawi said mat­ters of dis­crim­i­na­tion would have to be dealt with on a case-by-case ba­sis and he re­ferred to Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion where peo­ple can file ac­tions if they be­lieved they were be­ing sin­gled out.

What is clear, he said, is that putting sys­tems in place to deal with ter­ror­ism is a “very ac­tive” area which the Gov­ern­ment is fo­cus­ing on ex­ten­sive­ly and is like­ly to im­prove by the amend­ments that are be­ing brought to the Par­lia­ment floor.

“We have leg­is­la­tion, we have amend­ments in the de­bate, on Tues­day we would com­mence de­bate in the Sen­ate. You will note the im­prove­ment in the FIU’s re­port­ing and the jump in sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion and the fact that we blocked as a coun­try al­most $13 bil­lion in sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions ac­tiv­i­ty by re­port­ing through the FIU that there has been a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment that ob­vi­ous­ly didn’t hap­pen by mis­take,” he said.


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