OTTO CARRINGTON
“Please return my sister.” This is the cry of Raheema Khan, whose sister and children have been detained in Syria for the past four years.
More than 90 Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) nationals including 56 children and 12 women, among them a grandmother, have been pleading with the Government to allow them to return to their homeland.
They are being held at the Roj and Al-Hol, detention camps for families with alleged ISIS links.
Forty-four of the children in the camps are age 12 or younger, 15 of them are under the age of six and at least 33 children were born in Syria, including one child, age three, born in Al-Hol.
At least 13 Trinidadian males, including at least one teenage boy, are held in other detention centres. Six of the older boys and men–one 17, and five ages 18 to 20, were taken to Syria by family members when they were children.
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch held a press conference at Kapok Hotel to reveal the conditions that T&T nationals are being faced with in detention camps in Syria. They laid their report–Trinidad and Tobago: Bring Home Nationals from Northeast Syria Unlawfully Detained Trinidadians at Risk, Including 56 Children.
The group shared startling interviews with six nationals locked in camps and other detention centres. More than anything, their pleas were to come home.
Speaking at the press conference, Khan said, “I feel very happy that Human Rights Watch took interest in our cases here in Trinidad with our women and children. I’m glad to see that they put some of my responses in the report and some of our concerns. I’m happy that they have taken an interest. The families here are very happy that someone is actually listening to us and trying to help us.
“It’s been four years that we’ve been trying to bring these women and children home. The Government has been moving at a snail’s pace. All they have been telling the media is that we need to verify that these are our citizens, and that we are working on legislation. In four years’ time, haven’t you verified, haven’t you done anything?”
Khan said, “I’m hoping that I can get my family home, that we can all get our family home in time for Eid. Ramadan is coming just now. Every year for Ramadan, for Eid, we’ve been hoping that our families will be home. You know, this year we will spend Eid with them. But that is our hope this year that finally they can be home because they are getting sick in the camps. The children are depressed, they are sick. My sister, sent a message, and she said, ‘Why is our Government not doing anything? Like, our Government just hates us?’”
At least 130 nationals of T&T travelled to ISIS-controlled territory between 2013 and 2016, according to T&T’s Ministry of National Security. That is more people per capita than from any other Western country.
Most came from three tight-knit communities in Trinidad and went to Syria and Iraq as families, taking their children.
Letta Tayler, Associate Director, Crisis and Conflict Division at Human Rights Watch said she interviewed six T&T nationals.
“I visited northeast Syria in 2019 and 2022 and on each of these visits, I made multiple trips to the camps and other detention centres holding foreigners including nationals of Trinidad and Tobago. I can tell, I’ve interviewed several Trinis detained in these camps and other detention centres and I can tell you first hand that the conditions are horrific.
“Human Rights Watch is here today to call on the Government of Trinidad and Tobago to promptly repatriate all of its nationals unlawfully held in Northeast Syria. We ask the Government if it cannot take everyone at once to start with the Trinis who are most vulnerable including the children.
“These nationals of Trinidad and Tobago desperately need rehabilitation and reintegration services. Adults can be prosecuted if appropriate.”
Human Rights Watch said it stands ready to work with the Government of T&T to help forge a path forward to resolve this detention crisis. O
“Our research has found that these Trinidadian conditions are so dire and so inhuman in many cases that they may even amount to torture,” Tayler said.
“Many Trini’s are seriously ill and need surgery or other advanced medical care that is simply not available in Northeast Syria, which if any of you are not aware is a complex war zone. A very, very dangerous place. Turkey carried out airstrikes in recent months and as we know there was an earthquake whose repercussions came perilously close to these camps and prisons. Foreign men and older teens are held in prisons that are often overcrowded and in some cases rife with diseases such as tuberculosis.”
At least 36 countries have repatriated some or many of their nationals from Northeast Syria. Repatriations have increased since October 2022 with at least ten countries, including Barbados, bringing back some or many of their nationals. Many repatriated children are successfully reintegrating into their home countries, Human Rights Watch research has found.
Since the arrival of the Human Rights Watch in T&T and the announcement of the report being released, The office of the Attorney General in a media release claimed the group advised him that they intended to release a report of their “findings on Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday, February 28, 2023” and requested that he meet with them on either February 27 or March 1.
The AG had said it appeared “wholly impractical to request a meeting with me on the 27th of February with reference to a report already prepared and intended to be released on the 28th of February. It would not appear that there was an intention for the Government’s actions to date to have been included in that report.”
Jo Becker, Advocacy Director, Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch responded to Attorney General Reginald Armour’s press statement. She said they wrote to the Minister of National Security in December of last year asking for information on the Government’s plans for repatriation so that they could reflect this information in their report.
“We followed up, but have received only the briefest of replies with no details about the Government’s plans. Earlier this month, we asked for meetings with the Ministries of National Security, Foreign Affairs, and Legal Affairs to discuss these issues, but so far they have not agreed to meet with us.”
She said their also includes the Government’s commitments.
Calls to Armour and National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds went unanswered.
These are excerpts from the T&T nationals in videos provided by Human Rights Watch:
“My father lied to me, he told me that we were going to Disneyland,” said a detained 17-year-old Trinidadian boy taken by his father to Syria in 2014. “It’s not my fault, it’s my father’s fault. I wish I never came here to Syria. I just want to come back home, you know.”
A 19-year-old Trinidadian youth said, “My dad told me I was going to go to a hotel in Egypt and swim in a pool. I was 11 years old. I only knew the names of countries like Trinidad and America.”
He was among about 30 foreign youths–older teens and young men–detained 23 hours a day in a cell in Alaya prison that was just big enough to fit all their mattresses on the floor. The youths had only one toilet and shower and the stench permeated the cell, he said.
Three Trinidadians who went to Syria as adults said they thought they were going to a Muslim utopia, only to learn once they arrived that ISIS would not let them leave.
“This is a nightmare I cannot wake up from,” said a detained Trinidadian woman, adding that she was willing to serve prison time in Trinidad if she and her family were allowed to come home.
“As Muslims, we wanted to experience the Islamic State like Christians want to visit Jerusalem,” said the woman, one of nine members of the same family detained in Northeast Syria. “It was so easy to get to Syria… But then we found there was no way out.”