Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is about to ap­proach the courts to have a num­ber of T&T na­tion­als des­ig­nat­ed as ter­ror­ists and will al­so very short­ly present to Par­lia­ment new leg­is­la­tion to deal with peo­ple al­leged to be ter­ror­ist fight­ers, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day.

"The coun­try de­serves ac­tion and en­force­ment and that's ex­act­ly what we in­tend to do," Al-Rawi said in the Sen­ate.

He gave de­tails of how Gov­ern­ment plans to treat with T&T ter­ror­ist fight­ers and such per­sons re­turn­ing from over­seas, in re­ply to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark's queries on the is­sue.

Mark sought de­tails con­cern­ing the fu­ture of na­tion­als who've gone over­seas and are re­port­ed­ly fight­ing with the Is­lam­ic State (Isis) ter­ror­ist net­work. He asked if Gov­ern­ment in­tends to in­voke laws in re­spect of cit­i­zens with proven links to Isis and who wish to re­turn home.

Al-Rawi said two key pieces of leg­is­la­tion rel­e­vant to peo­ple proven to be linked to Isis and who wish to re­turn were the An­ti Ter­ror­ism Act (chp 12.07) and Pro­ceeds of Crime Act (chp 11.27). He said his pow­ers as AG are re­strict­ed to sec­tions 22b, 36 and 37 of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act.

"But oth­er key leg­isla­tive tools un­der these two acts are avail­able to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the Ju­di­cia­ry," he not­ed.

"Where some­one is proved to be linked to Isis, this Gov­ern­ment will in­voke the pro­vi­sions of the law that are with­in the dis­cre­tion of the Ex­ec­u­tive to ap­ply–re­gard­less of whether the per­son has al­ready left the coun­try or whether they wish to re­turn."

The AG said in cir­cum­stances, such as de­scribed in Mark's ques­tion, of cit­i­zens linked to Isis wish­ing to re­turn, Sec­tion 22B of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act will be in­voked. He said Sec­tion 22B (1) al­lows him to ap­ply to a judge for an or­der un­der sec­tion 22B(3) to des­ig­nate an in­di­vid­ual or an en­ti­ty and to freeze their as­sets. Al-Rawi said Sec­tion 22B (1-b-ii) al­lows such ap­pli­ca­tions to be made in re­spect of en­ti­ties or in­di­vid­u­als where there are rea­son­able grounds "to be­lieve an en­ti­ty/in­di­vid­ual is know­ing­ly act­ing on be­half of, at the di­rec­tion of, or in as­so­ci­a­tion with an en­ti­ty des­ig­nat­ed as a ter­ror­ist en­ti­ty by the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil."

Al-Rawi not­ed Gov­ern­ment had suc­cess­ful­ly in­voked Sec­tion 22B in the first-ever ap­pli­ca­tion to the High Court re­gard­ing Ka­reem Ibrahim. That ap­pli­ca­tion was filed in No­vem­ber 2015 and a court or­der was grant­ed short­ly af­ter list­ing Ibrahim (as a ter­ror­ist) and freez­ing his as­sets.

"The courts' guid­ance in this mat­ter will now great­ly as­sist the State in chart­ing a course for the var­i­ous types of ap­pli­ca­tions avail­able un­der Sec­tion 22B."

Al-Rawi said oth­er sec­tions of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act (36-37) fo­cus­ing on ter­ror­ist prop­er­ty will al­so be ap­plied where "cir­cum­stances so dic­tate." These al­low the DPP to ap­ply to a judge for an or­der to re­strain prop­er­ty that may ul­ti­mate­ly be made the sub­ject of a for­fei­ture or­der. Sec­tions al­low Gov­ern­ment to re­quest a judge to ap­point a per­son to take con­trol/man­age/deal with the prop­er­ty ac­cord­ing to ju­di­cial or­ders. Any­one pos­sess­ing the prop­er­ty must give it to the ap­point­ed man­ag­er.

Mark asked the AG about re­ports of "hun­dreds" of T&T fight­ers with Isis re­turn­ing to T&T if Gov­ern­ment was mon­i­tor­ing such peo­ple and whether it would in­voke the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism (22B1) Act in re­spect of these re­turnees.

Al-Rawi said there was no in­for­ma­tion of "hun­dreds" of T&T na­tion­als, though there may be anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion, but Gov­ern­ment must be dri­ven by ev­i­dence.

"The mat­ter of for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers is be­ing ad­dressed with all se­ri­ous­ness by all se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, with all for­eign part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­eign states, by Eu­ropol and In­ter­pol. That has led to the mon­i­tor­ing of a num­ber of peo­ple in ac­tive and re­al time cir­cum­stances," Al-Rawi added.

"The An­ti-Ter­ror­ism desk of the AG's of­fice, in co-or­di­na­tion with the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, is about to ap­proach the courts in re­la­tion to a num­ber of per­sons for Sec­tion 22B (An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act) des­ig­na­tions."

Mark asked the pre­cise num­ber of na­tion­als fight­ing with Isis at this time and about the re­sult­ing threat to T&T from such peo­ple.

Al-Rawi said, "A pre­cise num­ber is an in­ca­pa­bil­i­ty, as one re­lies on anec­do­tal in­for­ma­tion usu­al­ly orig­i­nat­ing from a dif­fer­ent coun­try where the in­for­ma­tion has to be specif­i­cal­ly ver­i­fied. ... I wouldn't be in a po­si­tion to pro­vide a num­ber. Suf­fice to say, this is a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al treat­ment that's be­ing ap­plied."

The AG was al­so asked by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Hadeed about a num­ber of al­leged ter­ror­ists trav­el­ling to Venezuela and re­turn­ing to T&T via porous bor­ders. Al-Rawi said Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil agen­cies are track­ing all is­sues and Gov­ern­ment has deep­ened its in­tel­li­gence shar­ing with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment and bor­der pa­trols.