Jensen La Vende

Sev­en­teen men and women held by po­lice on Tues­day at the Ja­maat al Mus­limeen Cara­po mosque have been re­leased with­out charge.They are now claim­ing vic­tim­i­sa­tion and are call­ing on Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith to apol­o­gise to them.Speak­ing at the of­fice of their at­tor­ney Criston Williams yes­ter­day, for­mer Life Sport co-or­di­na­tor Ra­jaee Ali, 28, and his broth­er Hamid Ali, 33, both ac­cused Grif­fith and arms of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry of tar­get­ing them mere­ly for their re­li­gious be­lief.

"I be­lieve if he (Grif­fith) is the per­son mak­ing these calls, these ir­re­spon­si­ble calls, then he should come out and apol­o­gise. I be­lieve that is what he should do as a grown man, as a man with some kind of pow­er. He should come out and apol­o­gise for the ir­re­spon­si­ble calls he has been mak­ing. There is noth­ing (il­le­gal) go­ing on in Cara­po, there is a mosque that we are try­ing to build and a com­mu­ni­ty," Ra­jaee Ali said.

Both men said they were de­tained on Tues­day along with 20 oth­er men and two women, where­as po­lice say they ar­rest­ed 16 men and two women.All ex­cept one man was re­leased be­tween Thurs­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing with­out any charges be­ing laid against them and with­out be­ing told why they were held, ex­cept for Has­san Ali who said po­lice told him he was de­tained on sus­pi­cion of kid­nap­ping.

In re­sponse to the de­mand for an apol­o­gy, Grif­fith told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view that he had lit­tle re­gard for the men's state­ments.He said Ali had to be jok­ing and did not know the pro­ce­dure in law en­force­ment. He said the po­lice were not in the busi­ness of pro­fil­ing any­one.Ra­jaee Ali said he would be seek­ing le­gal re­dress as it was the sec­ond time for the month that he had been ar­rest­ed, de­tained and re­leased.

The men said they were not sure why the mosque had been tar­get­ed and they were be­ing fur­ther ha­rassed by the po­lice who fol­lowed them around, took pho­tographs of them, and ar­rest­ed and ques­tioned any­one that they did busi­ness with.The sus­pect who re­mains in cus­tody is be­ing ques­tioned in re­la­tion to an il­le­gal gun.

Ter­mi­na­tion will hurt the youths–Ra­jaee

The im­me­di­ate ter­mi­na­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial Life Sport pro­gramme, the brain­child of Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts, is fair.This is ac­cord­ing to one of the for­mer co-or­di­na­tors Ra­jaee Ali, whose name has be­come em­broiled in the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with the youth trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme.

Speak­ing at his at­tor­ney's Rich­mond Street of­fice yes­ter­day, Ali said the an­nounce­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day al­though fair, would have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the youths that ben­e­fit­ed from a month­ly stipend of $1,500.

"The cor­rup­tion that we heard that it had in it, if it is true as they say, then prob­a­bly it is fair but it would be un­fair to plen­ty, plen­ty youths through­out the coun­try as well to take away the lit­tle earn­ing that they were get­ting. The youths would not know about mil­lions of dol­lars be­ing tak­en away," Ali said.