KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day that for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Nafeesa Mo­hammed is al­low­ing her angst about pro­tect­ing her fam­i­ly to dri­ve pub­lic dis­course.

Mo­hammed re­signed from the PNM on Tues­day and voiced sup­port for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) Sad­dam Ho­sein for the Barataria/San Juan seat. 

Al-Rawi said she has a dif­fi­cult per­son­al sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber want­ed by Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties. 

“That is not some­thing you can get past. My own be­lief is that she has a deep and se­ri­ous con­flict.”

He said Mo­hammed made de­mands of the gov­ern­ment de­spite the spe­cial co­or­di­na­tion be­tween the lo­cal Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and the US Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions and the Cen­tral In­tel­li­gence Agency.

Dur­ing their dis­cus­sions, he said Mo­hammed was adamant about pro­tect­ing her fam­i­ly, but the law op­er­ates to pro­tect all cit­i­zens.

Al-Rawi not­ed her crit­i­cism on the is­sue of repa­tri­at­ing mem­bers of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty in­volved in al­leged ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties, say­ing it again high­lights her con­flict.

“Let me make this ab­solute­ly clear and talk to Trinidad & To­ba­go. Nafeesa is say­ing to Trinidad & To­ba­go that these per­sons, who are cit­i­zens of Trinidad & To­ba­go, their hus­bands were killed in ac­tion. What ac­tion? ISIS? Could it be? Did they vol­un­teer to leave this coun­try as ISIS fight­ers, take their wives who went will­ing­ly in sup­port of ISIS and have chil­dren? God for­bid that they should ex­pose their chil­dren. Those are breach­es of an­ti-ter­ror­ism laws in the world so ac­cord­ing to Nafeesa, for­get that. Do not wor­ry with who may have been in­cul­cat­ed in ISIS or not. Just bring them home. I mean Trinidad & To­ba­go, watch some peo­ple care­ful­ly. Would you be com­fort­able with that? Just go and pick up 77 peo­ple and drop them in Trinidad & To­ba­go’s so­ci­ety. What did they go to do?”

Al Rawi said the gov­ern­ment draft­ed leg­is­la­tion for the re­turn of those cit­i­zens but could not get it to Par­lia­ment in time as it need­ed the in­put of the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.

He said that even Mo­hammed ad­mit­ted that these cit­i­zens left T&T to en­gage in ter­ror­ism with ISIS, which was re­spon­si­ble for the be­head­ing their en­e­mies and rap­ing chil­dren and women.

He said the var­i­ous Imams of the Mus­lim Round­table were con­cerned and in sup­port of the gov­ern­ment stance on cit­i­zens who en­gage in ter­ror­ism.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley failed to in­form her of the 2018 po­lice raids on mosques, which saw her nephew among 13 de­tained in an al­leged Car­ni­val ter­ror plot.

De­spite her fam­i­ly be­ing foun­da­tion mem­bers of the PNM, she said things have changed. She took is­sue with the de­ten­tion of sev­er­al of her Is­lam­ic coun­try­men and women lo­cal­ly and abroad and the pas­sage of “dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion”. 

“At the end of the day, more par­tic­u­lar­ly in 2018, I am telling you, Na­talee (Legore—host of The Morn­ing Brew), to be paint­ed with a brush of ter­ror is a hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence and that is what we ex­pe­ri­enced in the El Soc­coro com­mu­ni­ty.”

“The trau­ma that many per­sons un­der­went in this area. I mean 3 o’clock in the morn­ing to know…the po­lice and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers have their jobs to do, but I can tell you the man­ner in which these raids were car­ried out, it start­ed out as a ter­ror plot. The coun­try was trau­ma­tised on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2018, with the news that there was a ter­ror plot.”

Mo­hammed said that Row­ley, as head of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, along­side the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, should have en­sured that there was ev­i­dence that would stand up in the courts. Po­lice nev­er charged any of the de­tainees for ter­ror­ist crimes.

Asked how she linked the PNM to the po­lice ac­tion, Mo­hammed would on­ly say that she frowns on politi­cians’ in­volve­ment in law en­force­ment.

In Jan­u­ary, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the ter­ror plot was still with law en­force­ment and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion’s (DPP’s) of­fice. Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, po­lice ar­rest­ed 13 peo­ple from Aranguez, Cen­tral and South Trinidad and the East/West cor­ri­dor in se­ries of raids at homes and mosques, but lat­er re­leased them.

In Ju­ly 2019, chief of the U.S. Em­bassy’s Mil­i­tary Li­ai­son Of­fice Clau­dia Car­riza­les said the Car­ni­val ter­ror plot was not a hoax. 

“It had been re­al and we were able to ad­dress that threat,” Car­riza­les said.