There are now 89 T&T na­tion­als–in­clud­ing fam­i­lies–known to Gov­ern­ment who have joined the Is­lam­ic State of Iraq (Isis) in the last three plus years, T&T Guardian has con­firmed.

That is the most up to date fig­ure on the sit­u­a­tion which was giv­en by Gov­ern­ment ear­ly last Sat­ur­day morn­ing, short­ly af­ter dead­ly ter­ror­ist at­tacks on Paris claimed 129 vic­tims, left 350 wound­ed and the world reel­ing in shock and anger. Isis has claimed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and for­mer Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre head Garvin Heer­ah were among ex­perts who yes­ter­day came out in sup­port of laws to block T&T-born For­eign Ter­ror­ist Fight­ers (FTFS) re­turnees on their way back, well be­fore they reach T&T.

Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty leader at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed al­so urges rap­port be­tween state ap­pa­ra­tus and the frag­ment­ed lead­er­ship of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to as­cer­tain who's gone to Isis and why so "in­no­cent" peo­ple in the sce­nario wouldn't suf­fer.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon was quot­ed yes­ter­day as say­ing Isis pos­es "no threat to T&T right now" and there's no law to stop them re­turn­ing. He said if they'd com­mit­ted in­ter­na­tion­al crime, T&T could work with for­eign part­ners to bring them to jus­tice, but "for now they're still T&T cit­i­zens."

Dil­lon yes­ter­day sub­se­quent­ly as­sured, au­thor­i­ties are mon­i­tor­ing re­turnees. On the 89 per­sons with Isis, which T&T Guardian learned about on Sat­ur­day, Dil­lon said there are 80-plus, in­clud­ing about 35 men and oth­er per­sons who are fam­i­ly mem­bers. He said sev­er­al of the T&T fight­ers have been killed.

On as­sess­ments ear­li­er in the year from in­tel­li­gence sources that a num­ber of those who had gone were from T&T's crim­i­nal fringe el­e­ment, rather than con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lim ba­sis, Dil­lon said that as­sess­ment was still on par and those per­sons were be­lieved to be in­tel­li­gent.

Dil­lon as­sured that he was aware of laws that block re­turn­ing For­eign Ter­ror­ist Fight­ers (FTFs) in oth­er coun­tries be­fore they reach T&T. He said that is done with in­ter­na­tion­al al­lies.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi who had been Paris two weeks ago for a con­fer­ence, told T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, T&T has met with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to track peo­ple who leave T&T and head to Syr­ia and Turkey to join FTFs. He added, "We're al­so look­ing at Sec­tion 22b of the An­ti Ter­ror­ism Act deal­ing with ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and op­er­a­tional­is­ing in fuller form.

We'll ap­ply ex­ist­ing an­ti-ter­ror­ism laws in track­ing and mon­i­tor­ing of al­leged For­eign Ter­ror­ist Fight­ers from T&T, and specif­i­cal­ly cas­es con­cern­ing po­ten­tial re­turns. We al­so have a unit look­ing at strength­en­ing of the pack­age of laws to deal with ter­ror­ism and if it may be rel­e­vance to T&T's con­text."

"We as­sure T&T we're spar­ing no ef­fort in co-or­di­nat­ing mul­ti­ple re­sources in deal­ing with this so there can be ef­fi­cient and con­fi­dent pos­i­tive out­come for T&T's peace of mind and se­cu­ri­ty."