Ot­to Car­ring­ton

More than a week af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and mem­bers of his Cab­i­net met with a three-mem­ber com­mit­tee about the repa­tri­a­tion of T&T na­tion­als from refugee camps and de­ten­tion cen­tre in Syr­ia and Iraq, an at­tor­ney has raised con­cerns.

Criston J Williams, who rep­re­sents some of the T&T na­tion­als await­ing repa­tri­a­tion, said he hopes the com­mit­tee com­pris­ing for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, Is­lam­ic leader Kwe­si At­i­ba and re­tired diplo­mat Patrick Ed­ward “isn’t just a po­lit­i­cal tool be­ing used by politi­cians to fa­cil­i­tate what in­ter­na­tion­al and/or a lo­cal pop­u­la­tions may wish to hear at this par­tic­u­lar stage.”

Williams added: “How­ev­er, we ac­cept and we agree and we wel­come these three gen­tle­men and ba­si­cal­ly, from our point of view, we wish to em­brace them be­cause, in the month of June or Ju­ly, we wish to go across there to ver­i­fy some of our na­tion­als.

“From a le­gal per­spec­tive, it ac­tu­al­ly makes me won­der about the con­struct of the Ter­ror­ism Bill, and the role that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has to play in ad­vis­ing, at least with all our in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners and coun­ter­parts. It al­so ques­tions the role of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in al­so ad­vis­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the abil­i­ty of this team to raise up our in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts.”

Mem­bers of the com­mit­tee have been giv­en the as­sur­ance by Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley that na­tion­als in Syr­ia and Iraq will be re­turned to T&T.

Williams has of­fered the com­mit­tee the ex­per­tise of Dr Michael Akra Jervis, a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tion­al Par­lia­ment for Hu­man Rights, who has trained rep­re­sen­ta­tives from var­i­ous coun­tries in coun­tert­er­ror­ism and rein­te­gra­tion.

“I’m say­ing I’m not a bet­ting man, but I can bet $2 that his strate­gies will be ac­cept­ed world­wide and on a lo­cal ba­sis,” he said.

“if there’s any good­will on be­half of the gov­ern­ment, most sim­ply what can be done is that we can trans­mit aid to these per­sons and al­so use our in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts to trans­mit aid to the na­tion­als across there. Why? It re­al­ly hurts, not just as a . . . for­get be­ing a lawyer, for­get be­ing any­thing at all, just as a hu­man be­ing.

“When some­one is sit­ting down next to you and can show you pic­tures of the child with shrap­nel in their skin and the par­ents are cry­ing and be­seech­ing, and this is from since 2019 . . . it re­al­ly hits you and you re­alise that, hey, the time to act is now.”

Last month, Hu­man Rights Watch re­port­ed that more than 90 T&T na­tion­als, in­clud­ing at least 56 chil­dren, are un­law­ful­ly de­tained in life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions as Is­lam­ic State mem­bers. The or­gan­i­sa­tion ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of tak­ing al­most no ac­tion to help the de­tainees re­turn to T&T.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse to Williams’ re­qest, head of the three-man com­mit­tee, Nizam Mo­hammed de­clined com­ment.