SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

se­nior re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Less than a fort­night af­ter Sabi­rah Khal­i­dah Wa­heed com­plet­ed a six-year jail term in Iraq for her af­fil­i­a­tion with the ter­ror­ist group ISIS, the Iraqi gov­ern­ment is threat­en­ing to charge and im­prison her again.

This is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in Wa­heed’s saga ac­cord­ing to her at­tor­ney Criston J Williams.

Wa­heed, 33, com­plet­ed her sen­tence on Ju­ly 26, clear­ing the way for her to be­come the first T&T na­tion­al de­port­ed from the con­flict zone. Her two young chil­dren, one of whom was born in Iraq, were in­car­cer­at­ed with her.

Williams said al­though trav­el doc­u­ments were re­quest­ed from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry last month for Wa­heed and her chil­dren, he is still await­ing pos­i­tive feed­back.

He claimed the T&T Gov­ern­ment has been fail­ing in its oblig­a­tion to pro­tect Wa­heed and her chil­dren who have been made state­less in the con­flict zone since their sen­tence end­ed last month. The trio are still in prison.

Williams said he re­cent­ly lis­tened to two voice notes from Wa­heed. In the first, she plead­ed with a BBC re­porter for help, stat­ing that the T&T Gov­ern­ment had turned its back on her. In the sec­ond voice note she is heard say­ing that she needs her doc­u­ments to re­turn home be­cause the Iraqi gov­ern­ment is threat­en­ing to charge and jail her again.

“The is­sue is that she is in their coun­try il­le­gal­ly and they are sup­posed to give her an­oth­er charge and an­oth­er jail term. Re­mem­ber when she faces an­oth­er charge is not just her alone, it is her and her two chil­dren,” Williams said.

He de­scribed treat­ment met­ed out to Wa­heed and her chil­dren by the T&T au­thor­i­ties as cold-heart­ed.

“That is why the Iraqi gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed that ap­proach,” he said.

Williams said he plans to write the min­istry again ask­ing them to deal with mat­ter ex­pe­di­tious­ly and not cause na­tion­al shame for T&T.

“Sabi­rah is very des­per­ate. My first con­cern is re­al­ly and tru­ly to fa­cil­i­tate their re­turn,” he said.