Gail Alexan­der

Col­leagues of three T&T-born Imams de­tained in Venezuela say au­thor­i­ties there gave a re­lease or­der for the trio last Fri­day and their fam­i­lies ex­pect them home this week.At­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day, claim­ing the trio was ex­pect­ed home im­mi­nent­ly. The three are Hamza Mo­hammed and Sheik Has­san Hamid of the Las Lo­mas mosque and Ab­dul Salaam of Mara­bel­la Ja­maat, Mo­hammed said.They were among a group of T&T na­tion­als de­tained in Venezuela on March 19.

The Imams were sep­a­rate from the group. Fif­teen women and chil­dren from the group were lat­er re­leased.The Imams were de­tained un­der Venezuela's ter­ror­ism act. T&T had ap­pealed a rul­ing by the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties that the trio be held with­out bail. Dead­line for hear­ing was the mid­dle of this month.Fam­i­lies of the Imams hired Venezue­lan lawyers in ad­di­tion to T&T em­bassy rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Yes­ter­day Mo­hammed said while she didn't speak to the at­tor­neys her­self, she and oth­ers here re­ceived word from a Cara­cas-based in­di­vid­ual that the Venezue­lans made the re­lease or­der last Fri­day and that there was no case against the trio.She said they were told some pa­per­work had to be done for the re­lease, "and it seems that's tak­ing place. We ex­pect­ed they would have been phys­i­cal­ly out of the premis­es by now."

"But we've learned they have to be med­ical­ly ex­am­ined which was sup­posed to have been to­day (Tues­day) and there are still some doc­u­ments to be sort­ed out be­fore they leave. So it seems it's tak­ing a while."Mo­hammed said she'd heard For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dook­er­an had spo­ken about the "re­lease" last week­end. Dook­er­an didn't an­swer calls yes­ter­day.Rear Ad­mi­ral Richard Kelshall, who was ap­point­ed to spear­head ef­forts on the is­sue, was un­avail­able.