Gail Alexan­der

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.