Tau­reef Mo­hammed

Spend­ing hours in a "stink" morgue, be­ing called "Tal­iban", think­ing of get­ting shot in the head by of­fi­cers–mem­o­ries of Venezuela that have left Hamza Mo­hammed, imam of the Mon­trose mosque, still trem­bling to­day.In an in­ter­view at his Ch­agua­nas home last week, Mo­hammed, who re­cent­ly re­turned home af­ter his 55-day de­ten­tion in Venezuela, re­count­ed his ex­pe­ri­ence to the T&T Guardian.

Al­though he was not phys­i­cal­ly harmed, Mo­hammed said the fright and dis­hon­our he ex­pe­ri­enced left deep emo­tion­al scars which were tak­ing time to heal."Af­ter court one day, in the evening, they took us to a place–a morgue. From the time we en­tered that build­ing, the place was so stink...dead bod­ies were there. Just be­ing there and smelling those things was re­al­ly messed up," Mo­hammed said.

"They gave us these clothes to put on like what doc­tors wear at the hos­pi­tal (dis­pos­able hos­pi­tal gowns) and spent about two hours on each per­son do­ing de­tailed mea­sure­ments of dif­fer­ent parts of your body."In a coun­try un­der a state of emer­gency and un­able to un­der­stand the lan­guage, Mo­hammed was left to think the worst on many oc­ca­sions.

In re­call­ing one of his trips to the court, he said: "I was in a van alone with four oth­er of­fi­cers who had their guns on their lap. I didn't know where we were go­ing. All kinds of things ran through my mind. I start­ed to pray hop­ing that these peo­ple weren't car­ry­ing me some­where to put bul­lets in my head."

A re­spect­ed man in his com­mu­ni­ty, Mo­hammed re­mem­bered the count­less times he cried due to hu­mil­i­a­tion. "Just go­ing in­to the big truck to court, the sound of the siren and the at­ten­tion it drew from the peo­ple out­side, and the feel­ing that every­body out there thinks we're crim­i­nals made me cry all the way."

At one of their three court ap­pear­ances, Mo­hammed and the oth­er two imams were greet­ed with loud jeers as they made their way to the hold­ing cell. "We were walk­ing down the aisle be­tween the jail cells and every­body start­ed shak­ing the gates, shout­ing 'Tal­iban, Tal­iban, Tal­iban,' and I just bent my head. That was re­al­ly em­bar­rass­ing.""To know that in Trinidad I'm a man look­ing af­ter the needs of peo­ple as an imam and then I had to go through this. It af­fect­ed me re­al­ly bad­ly, emo­tion­al­ly."

A fa­ther of six, Mo­hammed said the most painful part of his time in Venezuela–a stay which sup­posed to last two days but turned in­to two months–was be­ing away from his fam­i­ly. "I am a fam­i­ly man and all I could have thought about was my fam­i­ly. They are every­thing to me."But there were a few mem­o­ries that brought smiles for Mo­hammed. "We would play ten­nis with the oth­er pris­on­ers and they used to call me the ten­nis champ. The Venezue­lan pris­on­ers shared snacks with us and one of them drew a sketch of me."

On ex­it­ing the prison, the imam's ho­n­our was re­stored, as all the pris­on­ers lined up and clapped. "To see the love and re­spect they had for us made it sad to leave." Asked how he was cop­ing now, he replied: "It's dif­fi­cult. I thought it would have been eas­i­er but mo­ments of the day and night take your thoughts back. I'm try­ing to come out of this men­tal state but it's re­al­ly hard...It's like part of me."

Mo­hammed ex­pressed con­cern for the Trinida­di­ans still de­tained in Venezuela, say­ing he hoped that they were freed soon and would be able ex­pe­ri­ence the same feel­ing as he did on re­turn­ing home.

Flash­back:

�2 March 19: Imams Hamza Mo­hammed, Sheik Has­san Hamid, and Ab­dul Salaam along with 19 oth­er Trinida­di­an Mus­lims were held by the Venezue­lan in­tel­li­gence agency SE­BIN on al­le­ga­tions of ter­ror­ism.

�2 March 28: Six women and eight chil­dren re­turned home af­ter be­ing re­leased by the courts.

�2 May 13: The three imams were re­leased from prison and re­turned home on May 18.