An­na-Lisa Paul

The com­mit­ment from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to repa­tri­ate over 100 T&T na­tion­als who are cur­rent­ly be­ing held at de­ten­tion camps and jails in Syr­ia and Iraq, has been wel­comed with re­lief by their rel­a­tives and the lo­cal group lob­by­ing for their re­turn.

How­ev­er, ap­pre­hen­sive about the lack of de­fin­i­tive time­lines for process, rel­a­tives yes­ter­day begged Gov­ern­ment to give them a present for Eid-Ul-Ad­ha, which will be cel­e­brat­ed on June 27.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, im­mi­gra­tion/hu­man rights at­tor­ney Criston J Williams, who leads The Time to Act Now, said, “This group wel­comes the re­cent and on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tions re­gard­ing the repa­tri­a­tion of Trinida­di­ans in Syr­i­an camps. We are hap­py that both the Prime Min­is­ter and the Op­po­si­tion Leader have stat­ed that they will repa­tri­ate its cit­i­zens.”

He added, “We must act im­me­di­ate­ly to cap­i­talise on this cross-par­ty agree­ment.”

Not­ing the PM had con­firmed the repa­tri­a­tion process will oc­cur, he said, “There is a need to cre­ate a time­line for the coun­try to mea­sure this ac­tiv­i­ty and stop the dis­trac­tion of le­gal pro­ceed­ings that con­sume crit­i­cal funds that can be con­tributed to re­solv­ing the ver­i­fi­ca­tion prob­lem and lo­gis­tics of the repa­tri­a­tion.”

For­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, Is­lam­ic leader Kwe­si At­i­ba and for­mer am­bas­sador Patrick Ed­wards met with Row­ley and oth­er min­is­ters who are on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Mon­day at White­hall to dis­cuss the is­sue.

Mo­hammed, At­i­ba and Ed­wards will now li­aise with the fam­i­lies of the Tri­nis di­rect­ly to gain more in­for­ma­tion on the cas­es.

Al­though no rep­re­sen­ta­tive from The Time to Act Now was in­vit­ed to the high-lev­el meet­ing, Williams said, “We will await the brief­ing by Mr Nizam Mo­hammed and his as­so­ciates and ac­knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment ac­cepts that a pos­i­tive oblig­a­tion is nec­es­sary.”

Ra­heema Khan’s sis­ter, aged 38, and her five chil­dren, aged 16, 14, 12, sev­en and five, are cur­rent­ly de­tained in north­east Syr­ia. Khan said they left T&T in 2014 un­der the guise that her broth­er-in-law was tak­ing them to Eng­land, on­ly for them to learn there­after that the fam­i­ly was in Syr­ia hav­ing joined the ISIS ter­ror­ist group. Her broth­er-in-law was lat­er shot dead by a sniper in Syr­ia.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Khan ad­mit­ted, “Yeah, we felt hap­py when we heard the news that the Prime Min­is­ter has giv­en a com­mit­ment to bring home all our na­tion­als that are in the camps there, so there was joy.”

Ap­peal­ing for it be done in a time­ly man­ner, Khan pledged, “The fam­i­lies here are will­ing to help the Gov­ern­ment, or the team, with any in­for­ma­tion they may need, to help speed us this process.”

Asked if her fam­i­ly was al­so will­ing to un­der­take some of the fi­nan­cial bur­den to bring their rel­a­tives back to T&T, Khan re­in­forced her fam­i­ly’s com­mit­ment to do so.

“From since 2019, we have been telling the Gov­ern­ment that we were will­ing to pay to help re­turn our fam­i­lies home,” she claimed.

As­sur­ing her rel­a­tives had a place to come home to and would not be­come a bur­den on the State, Khan said, “We have al­so told the Gov­ern­ment that the fam­i­lies here are will­ing to work with the Gov­ern­ment if they have to pro­vide any sort of psy­cho­log­i­cal care to these in­di­vid­u­als when they come home. We are will­ing to co­op­er­ate to en­sure that our fam­i­lies get the care that they need for a suc­cess­ful rein­te­gra­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of these in­di­vid­u­als.”

She ex­plained that fam­i­lies had pre­sent­ed a civ­il con­tract to the Gov­ern­ment in 2020 as part of their of­fer of sup­port and it was still valid.

“We know it will not be an easy process. We know that when they come here, there will be a lot of work to be done in terms of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, so we have faced that fact, and we are will­ing to work with the au­thor­i­ties to help these peo­ple heal,” she said.

She said fam­i­lies were anx­ious to meet Mo­hammed, not­ing many fam­i­lies has in­vest­ed a lot of time to gath­er doc­u­ments and files which could be passed to the gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed team.

“There shouldn’t be any sort of ex­cus­es be­ing used why it is not hap­pen­ing as fast as it should be,” Khan said.

Mean­while, Tam­jeed Ali’s two daugh­ters-in-law, aged 32 and 36, along with his six grand­chil­dren, whose ages range from four to 13, have been in­car­cer­at­ed at the Al-Roj De­ten­tion Camp for the past four years, af­ter his two sons were killed in Syr­ia.

Ali en­cour­aged Mo­hammed and his team to con­tact the Kur­dish group Ro­ja­va in Syr­ia, who has been as­sist­ing US au­thor­i­ties in reg­is­ter­ing per­sons at de­ten­tion camps, as he be­lieved they could speed up the process.

He said like Khan, his fam­i­ly is ready to un­der­take the cost of hav­ing his rel­a­tives re­turn home, and as­sured they would have a safe place to stay and would not be a bur­den on the State.

Ali said, “If these peo­ple, my daugh­ters-in-law and six grand­chil­dren, come home and do some­thing wrong, lock me up first. I will sign a doc­u­ment on that and then lock them up, be­cause I know them.”