Head of the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee, Nizam Mo­hammed, has ac­cused gov­ern­ment min­is­ters of sab­o­tag­ing ef­forts to repa­tri­ate 80 na­tion­als from war-torn coun­tries, al­leg­ing that his team is be­ing treat­ed as “in­ter­lop­ers” and de­lib­er­ate­ly ob­struct­ed in their mis­sion to bring cit­i­zens back to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mo­hammed, an at­tor­ney and for­mer Speak­er of the House, leads a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in April 2023. The com­mit­tee, which in­cludes for­mer diplo­mat Patrick Ed­wards and for­mer Amir Kwe­si At­i­ba, ini­tial­ly op­er­at­ed un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter but was re­as­signed to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in Jan­u­ary 2024, ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that the com­mit­tee has been un­able to ful­fil its man­date due to what he claimed was a lack of gov­ern­ment sup­port. He al­leged that var­i­ous gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have shown a clear dis­re­gard for the com­mit­tee’s work.

“It seems as if we were re­gard­ed as in­ter­lop­ers and tres­passers by the var­i­ous min­istries. It ap­pears as if, with­out any con­sul­ta­tion with us or with­out shar­ing of any ideas, we were treat­ed... we were blanked by all the min­istries and what made it worse, be­ing a prime min­is­ter’s com­mit­tee, we were re­port­ing to the prime min­is­ter through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and we were get­ting some as­sis­tance from the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter. He was lo­cat­ed in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter,” he said.

“But when Dr Row­ley was in­vei­gled in­to mov­ing the com­mit­tee’s ac­tiv­i­ties from OPM to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, those who felt that we were in­trud­ers, their sin­is­ter moves were con­clud­ed. They had us where we were... where they ac­tu­al­ly want­ed us and then the blan­ket dis­re­gard came about––min­istry of for­eign af­fairs, min­istry of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, of­fice of the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, don’t talk about chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer.”

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne has re­ject­ed Mo­hammed’s ac­cu­sa­tions, in­sist­ing that sup­port for the com­mit­tee has been rout­ed through the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Browne fur­ther em­pha­sised that some in­di­vid­u­als “min­imise the gar­gan­tu­an se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions of such repa­tri­a­tions.”

“The tim­ing can­not be based on any elec­tion date but rather when all sys­tems have been put in place. To do oth­er­wise would be to add ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty threats to an al­ready chal­leng­ing do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment. There is a small mi­nor­i­ty who say bring the for­eign fight­ers home now (plus the spous­es and off­spring who are trained in in­sur­gency and oth­er dead­ly tac­tics), but the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens know ful­ly well that this is not an ap­pro­pri­ate is­sue for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy or po­lit­i­cal brinks­man­ship,” he said.

Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, re­mains crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the wel­fare of the chil­dren and women strand­ed in the Mid­dle East.

“It’s like about 25 women and 55 chil­dren. There is in­no­cent lit­tle chil­dren. You won­der whether of­fi­cials who take these kinds of un­con­scionable de­ci­sions, whether they have chil­dren, or they know any­thing about chil­dren and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of adults to­wards chil­dren whether they are yours or not yours. And that is some­thing that re­al­ly, re­al­ly baf­fles me and it leaves me in ut­ter dis­gust and dis­ap­point­ment be­cause of the man­ner, the cal­lous man­ner in which this ex­er­cise has been ap­proached by the cur­rent politi­cians for the last two years,” he said.

He al­so point­ed to a sep­a­rate case in­volv­ing a woman in­car­cer­at­ed in Turkey, where his team faced sig­nif­i­cant ob­sta­cles in se­cur­ing her trav­el doc­u­ments from the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer.

The com­mit­tee re­mains con­fi­dent that with the right sup­port, it can suc­cess­ful­ly repa­tri­ate the cit­i­zens with­in six to nine months. De­spite his frus­tra­tions with var­i­ous min­istries, Mo­hammed re­served par­tic­u­lar crit­i­cism for for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds.

He said he asked Hinds to ap­prove a vis­it to the Syr­i­an em­bassy in Cara­cas to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion with of­fi­cials there, but this re­quest was de­nied. Mo­hammed added that they were will­ing to fund the trip them­selves, but it was “scoffed” at.

Mo­hammed al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in the lack of re­sponse from the new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, and not­ed that his re­quests for meet­ings with both Gon­za­les and Min­is­ter Browne had gone unan­swered.

“We had a new min­is­ter (Gon­za­les). We thought that per­haps he would have a con­science. He didn’t even have the cour­tesy of re­spond­ing to us af­ter we re­quest­ed a meet­ing with him. Up to to­day (yes­ter­day), we have not had a re­sponse from him. So, as I say, it is at every turn this sit­u­a­tion was treat­ed as if the mat­ter has been closed by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment,” he said.

Task Force Nightin­gale, es­tab­lished by for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Stu­art Young, was as­signed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of lead­ing the repa­tri­a­tion ef­fort. How­ev­er, nine years lat­er, Mo­hammed ques­tioned whether any sub­stan­tial progress has been made, cit­ing the lack of re­ports or up­dates from the task force.

Ef­forts to reach Prime Min­is­ter Young, Row­ley, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, and for­mer Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.