JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, February 22, 2025

T&T?num­bers now 120....

Govt to meet Muslims on Isis

by

20160807

Why ex­act­ly are they go­ing to Isis?

That's the ques­tion Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing pri­or­i­ty at­ten­tion to, along with on­go­ing moves to tight­en over­all se­cu­ri­ty, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon has said.

In seek­ing to ex­am­ine the fac­tors lur­ing peo­ple to leave T&T to join the ter­ror group, Dil­lon said Gov­ern­ment will en­gage the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to "di­a­logue on this and, to­geth­er, ex­am­ine root caus­es."

Dil­lon was con­tact­ed af­ter the T&T Guardian was able to as­cer­tain last Thurs­day from the se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor that the num­ber of T&T na­tion­als–fight­ers as well as fam­i­ly mem­bers–who have gone to Isis zones from late 2012 to date is now es­ti­mat­ed at close to 120, an in­crease over pre­vi­ous fig­ures.

Most re­cent­ly, nine TT na­tion­als were de­tained in Turkey, on Ju­ly 27. They were held with a Syr­i­an man who was tak­ing them via truck to Syr­ia for re­cruit­ment by Isis, Turkey's Dai­ly Sabah re­port­ed. They are now at Turkey's Adana Mi­gra­tion Cen­tre. Gov­ern­ment is await­ing a re­port on the cir­cum­stances of their pres­ence there from Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties.

Dil­lon said there had been a lull in the num­ber of peo­ple Isis-bound in the lat­ter half of last year, but con­firmed the se­cu­ri­ty sec­tor has been "see­ing ac­tiv­i­ty."

"In light of what has hap­pened (nine in Turkey) al­though we're still un­cer­tain if they were re­al­ly go­ing to Isis, we're ex­am­in­ing what fac­tors are lur­ing peo­ple to leave T&T to go there; what's hap­pen­ing lo­cal­ly with that. So we'll be en­gag­ing the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to di­a­logue on this and to­geth­er ex­am­ine root caus­es," Dil­lon said.

He ac­knowl­edged there may be con­cerns on the length of time to get in­for­ma­tion on the nine in Turkey, due to per­ceived "fear of the un­known" on the mat­ter. He ex­plained the time in­volved–and lev­el of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty–was to en­sure that in­for­ma­tion reach­ing T&T se­cu­ri­ty, and which would be fac­tored in­to any ap­proach­es, was ac­cu­rate.

The length of time may be due to ques­tion­ing be­ing done in Turkey.

Turkey, in re­cent years, has been the gate­way to Isis con­flict zones, since no visa is re­quired for T&T na­tion­als par­tic­u­lar­ly.

In Jan­u­ary, Turkey's "Hur­riyet News" re­port­ed four T&T na­tion­als were held among 913 for­eign ji­hadists from 57 coun­tries fight­ing with Isis, over the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to No­vem­ber 2015. T&T was the on­ly Caribbean coun­try. Last Thurs­day, se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies con­firmed two T&T na­tion­als re­turned–sent back–from Turkey in Jan­u­ary.

They are from Co­corite and Mor­vant, and were mon­i­tored.

So far, on­ly one T&T per­son–Ka­reen Ibrahim–has been deemed a ter­ror­ist un­der the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act. No T&T na­tion­als have so far been list­ed on the Unit­ed Na­tions' Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil's list of peo­ple sub­ject to sanc­tions for be­ing in­volved with Al-Qae­da and Isis.

But this might change, Dil­lon con­firmed, when T&T pur­sues ac­tion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for court de­c­la­ra­tion of 74 en­ti­ties as ter­ror­ists, among oth­er mea­sures.

Fig­ures up

In April 2016, Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal–a mem­ber of the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil–told Par­lia­ment about 400 peo­ple had been in­doc­tri­nat­ed and trained by Isis and men, women and chil­dren had left to join Isis.

Dil­lon had es­ti­mat­ed the num­ber of peo­ple who had left to be about 100 or just over. The Sun­day Guardian sub­se­quent­ly ob­tained a 50-page po­lice agency file from 2013 to 2015 list­ing what was de­scribed as "TT cit­i­zens who have left the coun­try and jour­neyed to Syr­ia to align them­selves with the Is­lam­ic State ter­ror­ist group."

The list com­prised 32 males, 30 fe­males and 40 chil­dren, but car­ried a last fig­ure of 105.

It fea­tured the names, gen­der, date of birth, last known lo­cal ad­dress of each per­son and date of their de­par­ture, date of ar­rival, their sta­tus (whether con­firmed in Syr­ia) and a pho­to­graph of each.

The list in­volved adult males large­ly of Afro-T&T de­scent be­tween their 30s and 50s, and women, al­so large­ly of Afro-T&T de­scent, bear­ing Mus­lim names and aged be­tween the 30s and 40s.

The chil­dren ranged in ages from two to 16 years. Boys and girls, some "mere tots and ba­bies."

Most adults car­ried Rio Claro ad­dress­es as well as Cen­tral lo­ca­tions–Boodram Street, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, Cunu­pia, Ed­in­burgh 500.

Sev­er­al were East/West Cor­ri­dor–Mal­oney Gar­dens, D'Abadie, Gon­za­les, Bel­mont, Rich­plain Road, Diego Mar­tin, La Canoa Road, San­ta Cruz, Don Miguel Road, San Juan, Mor­vant, Waller­field, Aranguez, Trou Macaque, Laven­tille and Pe­tit Val­ley.

South­ern ad­dress­es in­clud­ed Co­coyea Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, Pranz Gar­dens, Clax­ton Bay, Princes Town.

Routes tak­en by those who de­part­ed in­volved Turkey, To­ba­go en route to Frank­furt, Ger­many, via Venezuela, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Suri­name, Brazil, Pana­ma, Egypt and Lon­don. Al­so via Poole, Lon­don, and tran­sit­ing through Cu­ra­cao and via Lon­don, Dubai and Mani­la.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten-plus of the men on the list are con­firmed as hav­ing been killed in bat­tle. De­par­tures were seen to in­crease over 2014-2015.

Au­thor­i­ties es­ti­mate that those with Isis who have been killed are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 fight­ers.

Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials in re­cent years have mapped lo­cal "cells" in Princes Town, be­tween Fyz­abad and Point Fortin, as well as points of "crim­i­nal­i­ty" in East, Cen­tral and North.

They have cit­ed in­di­vid­u­als and net­work­ing which fa­cil­i­tate trav­el arrange­ments to the Mid­dle East, some­times un­der pil­grim­age cov­er.

Dil­lon con­firmed an­oth­er mat­ter "thor­ough­ly en­gag­ing Se­cu­ri­ty at­ten­tion" is the pitch in Isis' Ju­ly mag­a­zine made by T&T-born Isis fight­er Abu Sa'd al-Trinida­di, who some claim is Shane Craw­ford.

He urged sym­pa­this­ers to launch lo­cal at­tacks on Chris­tians, busi­ness­es, em­bassies and civil­ians. Na­tion­als of four oth­er states made sim­i­lar pitch­es to coun­try­men. T&T Mus­lim lead­ers have re­ject­ed his call.

The se­cu­ri­ty list ob­tained by T&T Guardian con­cern­ing peo­ple who went to Syr­ia over 2013-2015 to join Isis be­gins with in­for­ma­tion on Shane Do­minic Craw­ford de­scribed as al­so known as "Asadul­lah."

Craw­ford is be­lieved to be Abu Sa'd at-Trinida­di–the pitch­man in the lat­est Isis mag­a­zine's "kill call".

Craw­ford's date of birth is giv­en as Feb­ru­ary 22, 1986. Ad­dress then, as Waller­field.

His date of de­par­ture from T&T is list­ed as No­vem­ber 27, 2013.

Sta­tus was giv­en as "Con­firmed in Syr­ia." No re­turn date was list­ed.

In Isis' mag­a­zine, at-Trinida­di said, "The taghut gov­ern­ment of Trinidad then plot­ted against us, claim­ing we were plan­ning on as­sas­si­nat­ing the prime min­is­ter and a num­ber of oth­er min­is­ters in or­der to cause chaos and pan­ic in the coun­try.

"That would have been an hon­or for us to at­tempt, but the re­al­i­ty of our op­er­a­tions was much small­er, as I de­scribed be­fore.

"We were im­pris­oned for ter­ror­ism along with some Mus­lims who mere­ly knew us as well as oth­ers whom we had nev­er even met be­fore...They were un­able to make a case against us and we were freed, and de­spite be­ing placed un­der sur­veil�lance, we went back to do­ing what we knew we had to do..."

UNC ac­tivist Bar­ring­ton "Skip­py" Thomas, who knew Craw­ford for over 13 years, said Craw­ford was al­ways with him on UNC ac­tiv­i­ties, but wasn't his body­guard and didn't work for the UNC. He said Craw­ford was there to "watch his back," and was along in PP's 2010 cam­paigns and sub­se­quent­ly.

"I loved him like a broth­er, we're both Bap­tists. I helped him with mon­ey when he want­ed to get in­to fish­ing busi­ness. He used to buy and sell fish.

"Shane was with me–af­ter I was moved from URP–when I ver­bal­ly at­tacked the PM (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) and the crowd want­ed to lynch me.

"He sup­port­ed any­thing I was in­volved in. He was there when I con­test­ed To­ba­go elec­tions, when I had to take tough URP de­ci­sions.

"That same Robo­cop, killed re­cent­ly, told me some of my col­leagues want­ed my demise. Shane told him that wasn't hap­pen­ing.

"Shane was an ide­al­ist, a dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an–hat­ed weed, coke and crime. When on the cam­paign trail I want­ed to stop for a drink, he wouldn't want to. He was against in­jus­tice and op­pres­sion–an an­gry young man."

Thomas said Craw­ford was an­gry even be­fore the PP's 2011 state of emer­gency dur­ing which at-Trinida­di/Craw­ford claimed he was ar­rest­ed.

Asked about Craw­ford's mag­a­zine state­ments–that it would have been an ho­n­our to kill the for­mer PM–Thomas said, "If I'd known he want­ed to do that I'd have dis­cour­aged him. He'd hailed her as a per­son who sub­scribed to his ideals. Maybe (the state­ments) meant it would have been a badge of ho­n­our to kill her.

"As a broth­er, he has my un­flinch­ing, un­re­pen­tant sup­port on in­jus­tice. Any­time I seem him again, I'll em­brace him–but I don't share Isis' be­liefs."

Thomas said Craw­ford told him he was leav­ing T&T three days be­fore his de­par­ture.

"He said he in­tend­ed to 'par­tic­i­pate in an ex­er­cise that would trans­form T&T from a swamp of in­jus­tice to an oa­sis of jus­tice'. It struck me. He didn't say where he was head­ing.

"There were busi­ness­men in­volved–he of­ten re­ferred to the 'boss­man'.

"He sold his TV and pos­ses­sions to go. We em­braced when he left, I nev­er heard from him again. I'm sure if he was dead, I may have known."

Thomas said he's god­fa­ther to a child Craw­ford had with one of two wives. None of them is in T&T, he added.

IN TO­MOR­ROW's GUARDIAN: The mo­ti­va­tion to go to Isis and mea­sures to deal with it.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored