Rhon­dor Dowlat

Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive to­day in T&T for the sign­ing of a new agree­ment on en­er­gy af­fairs.With his ar­rival, the Waa­ji­hat­ul Is­laamiyyah (The Is­lam­ic Front) thinks the T&T Gov­ern­ment should be pru­dent and let good sense pre­vail by ask­ing Maduro, "as a sign of good­will", to re­lease or ex­pe­dite the le­gal pro­ceed­ings con­cern­ing the five Mus­lim T&T na­tion­als who are still de­tained in Venezuela.

The five men–Wade Charles, Do­minic Piti­lal, Asim Luq­man, An­dre Bat­ters­by and Leslie Dais­ley –were ar­rest­ed on ter­ror­ism charges on March 19 2014 af­ter the Venezue­lan in­tel­li­gence agency raid­ed their ho­tel rooms.On March 27, 2014 a del­e­ga­tion of of­fi­cials, head­ed by Rear Ad­mi­ral Richard Kelshall (na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T), left Trinidad on a fact-find­ing mis­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the head of the Is­lam­ic Front, Umar Adul­lah, dur­ing the one-day vis­it Kelshall made sev­er­al state­ments against three of the na­tion­als ar­rest­ed in sup­port of his in­for­mal state­ments to the de­fence at­tach� of Venezuela in Trinidad a few days pri­or."This ac­cu­sa­tion made Mr Kelshall re­mains high­ly dis­putable," he added.The five Trinida­di­ans are be­ing held in a Se­bin prison in Cara­cas, Venezuela.

"On a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, the men were not tak­en to court, ow­ing to court doc­u­ments not reach­ing Se­bin on time and the un­avail­abil­i­ty of trans­porta­tion," he said.T&T Guardian un­der­stands that the mat­ter is now be­ing sent for tri­al to Court 20 of the Tri­bunal de Juicio be­fore Judge Ali Pare­des, who has been re­cent­ly ar­rest­ed on al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion.

"The en­tire ju­di­cial sys­tem has been shut down due to some new ap­point­ments. So there is no telling when our na­tion­als would have an au­di­ence again," it was stat­ed.A diplo­mat­ic note was sent from T&T's Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs on June 18, 2014 to the Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­istry in Cara­cas to open diplo­mat­ic di­a­logue be­tween the coun­tries to seek the men's re­lease.

"A com­mit­ment was made by our gov­ern­ment and so an­oth­er in­ter­ven­tion on Au­gust 19, 2014 was made, via an­oth­er diplo­mat­ic note, but that is as far as it has reached. No fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion was made af­ter this date," Ab­dul­lah said.He be­lieves the T&T Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en a han­dle of the sit­u­a­tion and every­thing was left in the hands of the jus­tice sys­tem in Venezuela.

Ab­dul­lah added: "Our let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T was an­swered, re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, and then lat­er on to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty but still the mat­ter re­mains un­re­solved as our calls for the T&T Gov­ern­ment to send a del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela re­main hope­ful.

"The fam­i­lies of these men con­tin­ue to be vic­tims of bu­reau­crat­ic de­lay. Af­ter 11 months and four days, we are out of op­tions and fi­nances. It is dif­fi­cult as we have to hire some­one to cook ha­lal meals (food pre­pared as pre­scribed by Mus­lim law) on a dai­ly ba­sis for our de­tained Mus­lim broth­ers. Our ap­pli­ca­tion for ha­lal meals were fu­tile.

"These men were the sole bread win­ners of their fam­i­lies and were snatched from their wives and chil­dren. The lawyers, too, seem out of op­tions and are ask­ing that we put pres­sure on our gov­ern­ment to do some­thing in the mat­ter as it is 100 per cent po­lit­i­cal. Our Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs has since di­rect­ed us to the Trinidad Em­bassy in Cara­cas."

The Is­lam­ic Front has been in Venezuela over the past five months with the hope of meet­ing as many in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions who might be able to as­sist in the mat­ter, he said."We see this as an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for our gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promise; in do­ing all that they could with­in their pow­er to bring back our na­tion­als home.

"An op­tion has pre­sent­ed it­self and again we are ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment not to al­low this op­por­tu­ni­ty to pass by with­out con­sid­er­ing the free­dom of our na­tion­als, while re­main­ing cog­nisant of the prover­bial can­dle cost­ing more than the fu­ner­al," he added.