Derek Achong

Rel­a­tives of a 30-year-old stu­dent be­ing de­tained in Sau­di Ara­bia un­der sus­pi­cion of be­ing a ter­ror­ist are call­ing on the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry for ur­gent as­sis­tance in se­cur­ing his re­lease.Tariq Shamoon Mo­hammed, a fi­nal year stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Med­i­nah, was de­tained by Sau­di na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials as he re­turned to that coun­try on Au­gust 21 af­ter va­ca­tion­ing in T&T.

On Mon­day, Mo­hammed's fa­ther, Shamoon, wrote to For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an seek­ing diplo­mat­ic in­ter­ven­tion as he claimed his son was be­ing un­law­ful­ly de­tained.The plight comes on the heels of re­ports of sev­er­al T&T na­tion­als trav­el­ling through Turkey to join for­eign fight­ers sup­port­ing the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (Isis).

In his let­ter, which was ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion 106.1 FM ra­dio net­work host Shamoon Mo­hammed plead­ed his son's in­no­cence as he said:

"Our son has dili­gent­ly pur­sued his course of stud­ies re­ceiv­ing good grades along with his wife, Saudah. He has nev­er left Sau­di Ara­bia to go to any Mid­dle East­ern coun­try dur­ing his stay there. He is not in­volved in any neg­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties there. He has been a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen through­out his life."

Shamoon, of Mo­hammedville, El So­cor­ro, claimed since his son's de­ten­tion, he and his wife were con­tact­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of T&T's Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, who ques­tioned them on their son's pos­si­ble ter­ror­ism link."We are un­aware of how this mis­in­for­ma­tion reached our Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. When we saw the pho­to­graph of the al­leged ac­tivist, it was clear it was not our son Tariq.

"It seems some per­son or agent in Med­i­nah sent in­for­ma­tion to our Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty which is a clear case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty and/or mis­in­for­ma­tion," Shamoon said.In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Dook­er­an said he was yet to re­ceive the let­ter."I haven't seen it but I will check in­to the is­sue as I am sure it is be­ing ad­dressed by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary," Dook­er­an said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Frances Seignoret said she was in fact in re­ceipt of the let­ter and that the is­sue was be­ing ur­gent­ly ad­dressed.At­tached to the re­quest to the min­istry was a first hand ac­count of the fam­i­ly's on­go­ing ex­pe­ri­ence from Mo­hammed's wife Saudah Ali.In her de­tailed state­ment on the is­sue, Ali claimed she and her hus­band first en­coun­tered prob­lems when they ar­rived in the Unit­ed King­dom and at­tempt­ed to board a con­nect­ing flight to their usu­al in­tran­sit in Turkey.

Ali said she and their 16-month-old son, Su­laimaan, were sep­a­rat­ed from Mo­hammed for three hours as he was be­ing ques­tioned by British in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cers be­fore they were even­tu­al­ly al­lowed to catch a lat­er flight."Tariq told me that they asked him about the Ara­bic books he had with him which were his uni­ver­si­ty school books and al­so de­tails of where we lived in Med­i­nah and about his car li­cence and so on," Ali said.

She claimed they were stopped again as soon as they ar­rived in Turkey."Af­ter a few hours they told Tariq he could not en­ter Is­tan­bul, as we were plan­ning on stay­ing there for two nights and then go­ing on to Med­i­nah. They want­ed him to go back to Lon­don," Ali said.

She said af­ter be­ing held back for al­most 12 hours they were finial­ly al­lowed to board a flight to Sau­di Ara­bia. Al­though the cou­ple thought their woes were over as they nev­er had is­sues with trav­el­ling to and from the coun­try they have called home for over five years, their worst fears were re­alised as they were greet­ed by Sau­di of­fi­cials up­on ar­rival.

Ali said their be­long­ings, in­clud­ing a large amount of cash, used to pay the liv­ing ex­pens­es for the rest of the year were seized and she was sep­a­rat­ed from her hus­band and was trans­port­ed to their apart­ment."On ar­riv­ing at the apart­ment I could tell that it was searched as things were turned up­side down and my lap­top and old phones were miss­ing," she said.

She claimed that since then she had not been able to see her hus­band, who was be­ing held at Bu­raidah Cen­tral Prison, and was on­ly able to speak with him over the phone on one brief oc­ca­sion."Every­day I con­tin­ued call­ing the of­fice ask­ing about him and to talk to him and they told me he was on­ly al­lowed to talk to me once which he did and so I couldn't speak to him again.

"To­day is day 11 that my hus­band, Tariq Shamoon Mo­hammed, has been de­tained and I still have not been in­formed as to the rea­son of his de­ten­tion. All I have been told thus far is that he is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion," she said as she claimed she and her son were vir­tu­al­ly un­der house ar­rest as they were con­stant­ly mon­i­tored by Sau­di of­fi­cials.

She al­so claimed she and her son were sur­viv­ing on the good­will of their neigh­bours as the fam­i­ly's mon­ey was yet to be re­turned.