Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go joins the world in mark­ing 25 years since the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror­ist at­tacks in the Unit­ed States, a lead­ing lo­cal Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion is re­new­ing its call for the Gov­ern­ment to re­verse its des­ig­na­tion of Hamas, Hezbol­lah and Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties.

At the same time, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to be­come com­pla­cent about the con­tin­u­ing threat of rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, said that al­most five months af­ter the des­ig­na­tions, he was un­aware of any mem­bers of the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing their as­sets frozen, bank ac­counts af­fect­ed or be­ing sub­ject­ed to ad­di­tion­al scruti­ny as a con­se­quence of the mea­sures.

How­ev­er, he said the ab­sence of such re­ports did not re­solve what his or­gan­i­sa­tion con­sid­ers the cen­tral is­sue—the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for plac­ing the three or­gan­i­sa­tions on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ror­ist list.

“We are call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­voke the an­nounce­ment con­cern­ing the des­ig­na­tion of Hamas, Hezbol­lah and the oth­ers as ter­ror­ist groups,” Mo­hammed said.

He ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment should demon­strate how the or­gan­i­sa­tions threat­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty be­fore main­tain­ing the clas­si­fi­ca­tions.

Mo­hammed said Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the is­sue but had re­ceived no re­sponse.

He al­so claimed the des­ig­na­tions were in­flu­enced by the Unit­ed States.

Mo­hammed strong­ly crit­i­cised Is­rael’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in Gaza and called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er clos­er re­la­tions with Is­rael.

While Mo­hammed ques­tioned the do­mes­tic se­cu­ri­ty ba­sis for the des­ig­na­tions, Nep­tune-Fi­garo said Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ror­ism risk re­mains dy­nam­ic and re­quires con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing, in­clud­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of lo­cal sup­port for ex­trem­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions and ide­olo­gies.

Nep­tune-Fi­garo, whose re­search has ex­am­ined vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism and ter­ror­ism in Trinidad and To­ba­go, point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to the im­pact ISIS pre­vi­ous­ly had on the coun­try.

“ISIS was one of those or­gan­i­sa­tions able to pen­e­trate our pop­u­la­tion at vast lev­els,” Nep­tune-Fi­garo said.

“Be­cause of that, we still have to con­tin­ue to de­vel­op poli­cies and just be on guard for any type of re­sponse or any type of par­tic­i­pa­tion in ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go at­tract­ed in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion dur­ing the rise of ISIS af­ter sev­er­al na­tion­als trav­elled to con­flict zones in Syr­ia and Iraq.

She al­so ques­tioned whether there had been any change in the State’s po­si­tion re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als and their fam­i­ly mem­bers who re­main in camps in Syr­ia.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der for an as­sess­ment of the coun­try’s cur­rent ter­ror­ism readi­ness, pre­pared­ness and threat en­vi­ron­ment. Mes­sages sent to the min­is­ter re­mained unan­swered up to press time.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie was al­so sought on what ac­tion fol­lowed the ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions.

The An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Unit (ATU), which op­er­ates with­in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, deals with ap­pli­ca­tions for ter­ror­ist des­ig­na­tions and tar­get­ed fi­nan­cial sanc­tions.

Je­re­mie was asked how many in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties are cur­rent­ly des­ig­nat­ed un­der Trinidad and To­ba­go’s an­ti-ter­ror­ism frame­work, what ac­tion had oc­curred since the April des­ig­na­tions, whether any as­sets had been iden­ti­fied or frozen, and whether there had been in­ves­ti­ga­tions, re­fer­rals or delist­ings.

In re­sponse, Je­re­mie said, “The ATU is re­quired to pub­lish des­ig­na­tions, delist­ings and frozen as­sets. It is up to date in its pub­li­ca­tions.”

The re­newed de­bate comes as Trinidad and To­ba­go marks the 25th an­niver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist at­tacks.

Four­teen Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als were among those killed when hi­jacked air­craft struck the World Trade Cen­tre in New York.

The at­tacks killed near­ly 3,000 peo­ple and trans­formed the in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty land­scape, lead­ing gov­ern­ments around the world, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, to strength­en leg­is­la­tion deal­ing with ter­ror­ism, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion.