Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion Inc of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AS­JA) has writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ap­peal­ing for him to look in­to the plight of T&T na­tion­als be­ing de­tained in de­ten­tion camps in Syr­ia and Iraq.

The two-page let­ter was signed by AS­JA’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Rahi­mool Ho­sein, and de­liv­ered on Thurs­day.

While it was mak­ing a case for the repa­tri­a­tion of the af­fect­ed per­sons, who have been ei­ther im­pris­oned or kept in the camps due to their af­fil­i­a­tion with the in­ter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ist group ISIS, AS­JA said it holds no briefs, records, or files on any of the in­di­vid­u­als in those coun­tries. It al­so not­ed that ac­cord­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tions over the years by AS­JA, none of the in­di­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly in those coun­tries were from or as­so­ci­at­ed with any masjid or ja­maat that is part of AS­JA.

In the let­ter, Ho­sein said, “We re­fer to our cor­re­spon­dences of 24th Jan­u­ary 2020 and March 2nd, 2023, as well as our press con­fer­ence held on March 6, 2023, re­gard­ing the mat­ter of in­di­vid­u­als de­tained in for­eign lands due to their in­volve­ment with ISIS. We wish to re­it­er­ate that the AS­JA, our ap­peal, mere­ly one of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an na­ture, is to urge the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to ex­pe­dite and has­ten the process­es and pro­ce­dures to bring some mea­sure of clo­sure, one way or an­oth­er, to this long-stand­ing mat­ter.”

Ho­sein said AS­JA “is of the firm view that it is on­ly and sole­ly with the re­sources of the Gov­ern­ment, and the rel­e­vant min­istries and de­part­ments of gov­ern­ment, that any of these in­di­vid­u­als can be vet­ted and ver­i­fied as le­git­i­mate cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing chil­dren born in refugee camps or on the bat­tle­field.”

He said on­ly the Gov­ern­ment could al­low the in­di­vid­u­als the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-en­ter T&T’s shores and the sta­tus of these in­di­vid­u­als af­ter re-en­try was en­tire­ly at the dis­cre­tion of Gov­ern­ment.

“Our ap­peal at the re­cent press con­fer­ence was on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds, and we asked the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to look care­ful­ly in­to ways that can bring some mea­sure of clo­sure to this is­sue based on the al­leged liv­ing con­di­tions of where these in­di­vid­u­als may be domi­ciled. AS­JA is stat­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that, based on in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports over the years, in­di­vid­u­als such as these who had vol­un­tar­i­ly left their re­spec­tive home coun­tries to vol­un­tar­i­ly join that so­ci­ety and ide­ol­o­gy cre­at­ed by ISIS, have been ex­posed to, and/or con­doned, and/or in­ter­act­ed with, and/or been in­volved in a so­ci­ety that is to­tal­ly apart, alien, and con­trary to the laws, cul­ture, so­cial prac­tices, liv­ing con­di­tions, and en­vi­ron­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he said.

“De­spite our call for ex­pe­di­tious repa­tri­a­tion, AS­JA as­sumes no fi­nan­cial li­a­bil­i­ty in this ex­er­cise but can on­ly com­mit hu­man re­sources to­ward the spir­i­tu­al and re­li­gious en­light­en­ment of these in­di­vid­u­als away from the mis­guid­ed path they have cho­sen, once they have been of­fi­cial­ly cleared for in­ter­ac­tion with the gen­er­al pub­lic by the ex­perts and pro­fes­sion­als ap­point­ed by the rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agency.”