Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed has ac­cused PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi of con­tin­u­ing to “in­stil fear” in the pub­lic over the repa­tri­a­tion of T&T women and chil­dren from Mid­dle East refugee camps. She has al­so called on Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to work with Gov­ern­ment to get the repa­tri­a­tion done.

Mo­hammed’s com­ments fol­lowed Al-Rawi’s con­tri­bu­tion to a re­cent Sen­ate de­bate on the Cit­i­zen­ship (Con­sti­tu­tion Amend­ment) Bill 2025, which would ex­pand cit­i­zen­ship el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to peo­ple whose grand­par­ents were born in T&T.

Al-Rawi warned the bill could al­low for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers (FTFs), state­less per­sons and oth­ers to gain T&T cit­i­zen­ship. He said FTFs from this coun­try trav­elled to Mid­dle East con­flict zones be­tween 2012 and 2015 to join the Is­lam­ic State group. Af­ter ISIS’ de­feat in 2018, sur­viv­ing mem­bers were placed in refugee camps. He added that courts abroad had been in­quir­ing about T&T’s po­si­tion on the chil­dren of FTFs and how they might ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship or re­turn home.

Since 2020/21, Mo­hammed has spear­head­ed ef­forts on be­half of lo­cal fam­i­lies seek­ing the re­turn of women and chil­dren from those camps. In 2020, US Cen­tral Com­mand (CENT­COM) urged coun­tries to repa­tri­ate their cit­i­zens due to ris­ing rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion in the camps.

“Faris con­tin­ues to in­stil fear in the minds of the pop­u­la­tion about the repa­tri­a­tion of chil­dren and women from the Mid­dle East,” Mo­hammed said.

“These are all dis­placed T&T cit­i­zens, many of whom do not even have the men­tal ca­pac­i­ty to com­mit a crime far less to be cat­e­gorised as for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers! This is a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in which 72 chil­dren and 25 women are lan­guish­ing un­der hor­ren­dous con­di­tions.”

She not­ed US mil­i­tary of­fi­cials from CENT­COM and South­ern Com­mand have re­peat­ed­ly of­fered to help coun­tries repa­tri­ate their cit­i­zens.

“Our Prime Min­is­ter and her del­e­ga­tion will be at­tend­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly this week and will have a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage in side­line meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Unit­ed States, Syr­ia, Iraq, Turkey and oth­ers to repa­tri­ate our cit­i­zens,” she said.

Mo­hammed added that Al-Rawi’s com­ments in the Sen­ate de­bate “con­firm the de­lib­er­ate at­tempts on the part of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to pre­vent repa­tri­a­tion.”

“They played pol­i­tics with this is­sue and I can on­ly hope and pray that our new Prime Min­is­ter and her team do not al­low such fear­mon­ger­ing to con­sume them,” she said.

“We have a mod­ern child pro­tec­tion and ju­ve­nile jus­tice sys­tem in place, and many in­di­vid­u­als, NGOs and civ­il-so­ci­ety groups are will­ing to as­sist in the repa­tri­a­tion, re­uni­fi­ca­tion and rein­te­gra­tion of our dis­placed cit­i­zens at min­i­mal cost to the State.”

Mo­hammed urged Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les to “ac­tive­ly help” Gov­ern­ment re­solve the is­sue in­stead of “al­low­ing these misog­y­nists to con­tin­ue to fu­el fear in the process.”