Joshua Seemu­n­gal

T&T’s largest Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion, the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), says it ap­plauds Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s com­mit­ment to bring back the T&T na­tion­als be­ing held in Syr­ia and Iraq.

Ac­cord­ing to AS­JA’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Imam Raf­fa­ic Mo­hammed, the Prime Min­is­ter must be cred­it­ed for de­cid­ing on be­half of the peo­ple of T&T in the long­stand­ing mat­ter.

“I’m sure he will have his peo­ple make checks and all those sorts of things be­cause you have to check these peo­ple. But the peo­ple are cit­i­zens of T&T and the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing an ac­tion to bring them home. It doesn’t have any harm in that. He’s just tak­ing pre­cau­tions. That’s why it prob­a­bly took so long,” Imam Mo­hammed said.

“So, the Gov­ern­ment is with­in its rights. They have to find out and in­ves­ti­gate. They have to do what they have to do, and I ap­plaud the Prime Min­is­ter if, on be­half of Trinidad, he de­cid­ed to take a de­ci­sion that he’s bring­ing the peo­ple, and if he’s bring­ing the peo­ple, he’s bring­ing the peo­ple.”

Asked if AS­JA would be will­ing to as­sist with the rein­te­gra­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive process of the cit­i­zens up­on their re­turn home, Imam Mo­hammed said AS­JA has al­ways helped those in so­ci­ety.

“As a re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tion, if a per­son comes and they need some help, they could get the help, and what­ev­er AS­JA has in place, they will try to do. AS­JA has nev­er re­fused any­body in Trinidad of any­thing,” he said.

“But AS­JA can­not com­mit them­selves and say AS­JA will do this or do that. It will be out of place. AS­JA can­not promise some­one that they will do this or do that - bring the peo­ple and we will do this - no, you have a Gov­ern­ment that is the au­thor­i­ty of T&T, whether it is Mus­lim, Hin­du, Chris­t­ian, who­ev­er it is.”

At­tempts to get a com­ment from head of the Ja­maat Al-Mus­limeen or­gan­i­sa­tion, Imam Sadiq Al Razi, were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley com­mit­ted to bring­ing back the more than 100 T&T na­tion­als who were ei­ther held in refugee camps or de­tained in prison in Syr­ia and Iraq.

The PM has al­so ap­point­ed a three-man team, head­ed by for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, to li­aise with the fam­i­lies of the Tri­nis to get fur­ther in­for­ma­tion The oth­er mem­bers are Imam Kwe­si At­i­ba and for­mer am­bas­sador Patrick Ed­wards.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with the PM and mem­bers of the na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil at White­hall on Mon­day, Mo­hammed told the me­dia, “A lot of dis­cus­sions have tak­en place and we have looked at all the ram­i­fi­ca­tions sur­round­ing the re­turn of our peo­ple from Syr­ia.

“It is not a sim­ple mat­ter of just tak­ing our peo­ple and bring­ing them back home. All the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this sit­u­a­tion are such that they have all kinds of in­ter­na­tion­al im­pli­ca­tions and the Gov­ern­ment, though it is com­mit­ted, has to be very thor­ough in its ap­proach.”