Ef­forts to bring home Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als strand­ed in de­ten­tion camps over­seas have stalled, as the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee says it is still await­ing di­rec­tion from the new In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee es­tab­lished by Gov­ern­ment.

Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee chair­man Nizam Mo­hammed, said yes­ter­day that since the change of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the sep­a­ra­tion of the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, De­fence, and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, “noth­ing of sig­nif­i­cance” has tak­en place.

“We have been hold­ing our hands and wait­ing to hear from them un­til they give us new di­rec­tions,” Mo­hammed said, not­ing the com­mit­tee is ready to act once the new Gov­ern­ment fi­nalis­es its frame­work for han­dling repa­tri­a­tions.

The com­mit­tee was es­tab­lished dur­ing the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, as part of a pol­i­cy re­sponse to cit­i­zens who had trav­elled to Syr­ia and Iraq to join the Is­lam­ic State and were sub­se­quent­ly placed in the camps af­ter the ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tion was crushed. The com­mit­tee was tasked with de­vel­op­ing pro­ce­dures to safe­ly re­turn na­tion­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly women and chil­dren, while bal­anc­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and hu­man­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions.

The de­lay comes as in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure grows for T&T to ad­dress the plight of its cit­i­zens held in pris­ons and de­ten­tion camps in the Mid­dle East.

Hu­man Rights Watch has re­port­ed that more than 90 na­tion­als, in­clud­ing 21 women and at least 56 chil­dren, re­main de­tained in north­east Syr­ia, many in over­crowd­ed camps run by Kur­dish-led forces. It said four ad­di­tion­al women and sev­en chil­dren are im­pris­oned in Iraq af­ter con­vic­tions on charges linked to the Is­lam­ic State. Hu­man rights groups have de­scribed these de­ten­tions as un­law­ful, not­ing that many of those held have nev­er been charged or brought be­fore a court. They have urged T&T to repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren.

For fam­i­lies of those strand­ed abroad, the wait has been ag­o­nis­ing.

“We con­tin­ue to reach out to our loved ones, but un­til the In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee acts, we are just wait­ing,” Mo­hammed said.

T&T has one of the high­est per-capi­ta rates of for­eign fight­ers who trav­elled to join ISIS be­tween 2014 and 2016, with es­ti­mates rang­ing from 130 to 240 peo­ple. —Ot­to Car­ring­ton