Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to re­turn T&T na­tion­als from the Mid­dle East refugee camps is is ex­pect­ed to be pi­lot­ed in Par­lia­ment soon af­ter the next ses­sion be­gins.

This was con­firmed by top gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Guardian Me­dia queries. Guardian Me­dia par­tic­u­lar­ly in­quired fol­low­ing the death last Sun­day of Am­ral Khan, a par­ent of two T&T women and their five chil­dren who are at the Al Hol Camp in Syr­ia. Since 2019, Khan has been among the main lob­by­ists to re­turn T&T na­tion­als who have been in refugee camps.

In a 2021 Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view, Khan ad­mit­ted his daugh­ters made a grave mis­take in go­ing to the Mid­dle East years ago, but he con­stant­ly wor­ried over them and al­so felt his grand­chil­dren should not have to suf­fer in the refugee camps where there was no ad­e­quate ac­cess to cloth­ing, food, health­care, clean wa­ter, or elec­tric­i­ty. "... Once you have a fam­i­ly mem­ber there, from the mo­ment you wake up in the morn­ing you imag­ine what is tak­ing place on that side (of the world)," Khan had lament­ed.

The Re­turnees bill, which the Gov­ern­ment pro­posed in 2023, is geared to re­turn T&T na­tion­als from the Mid­dle East refugee camps where they have been since the 2018 de­feat of the Is­lam­ic State ter­ror­ist group. In 2017 Gov­ern­ment stat­ed that 130 peo­ple–men, women and chil­dren–went to ISIS con­flict zones from 2012 to 2015.

Since 2019, sur­vivors of those who had joined ISIS from all over the world were de­tained in refugee camps in Syr­ia and Iraq.

Fam­i­lies of the T&T na­tion­als there–some of who hadn't been aware of their rel­a­tives’ where­abouts un­til much lat­er–have been seek­ing since then to bring them home. Among chief spokesper­son is at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed who has lob­bied to have 72 chil­dren and 25 women re­turned.

Mo­hammed lament­ed Khan’s death. "He lived in Kel­ly Vil­lage be­neath the path of planes fly­ing to­wards Pi­ar­co Air­port. I can well imag­ine, this poor man, see­ing those planes every day, might have thought about his loved ones in the camps and hoped to see them re­turn on a plane like that–but he nev­er got the chance."

In 2021, Khan said that his daugh­ters–be­fore leav­ing T&T–said they were go­ing with their fam­i­lies "on a pil­grim­age in the Mid­dle East" but they failed to re­turn. Khan said his fam­i­ly was sur­prised to learn where they were when told lat­er.

For­mer house speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, who heads the team gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed in 2023 on the re­turnees' project and which li­aised with fam­i­lies, said yes­ter­day, "I was very sad to learn of Am­ral’s pass­ing. We’re plan­ning to vis­it his fam­i­ly. It’s heart­break­ing for them and us al­so, so we’ll con­tin­ue the work and hope it comes to fruition." Mo­hammed said his team had giv­en the Gov­ern­ment six or sev­en re­ports with rec­om­men­da­tions over its tenure; the last re­port up to six weeks ago. He said the fam­i­lies of peo­ple in the camps had co­op­er­at­ed and based on their views gave the team in­for­ma­tion on where rel­a­tives were lo­cat­ed, how to find them and get them home.

He said the team had got­ten to the stage of work­ing with Turk­ish au­thor­i­ties who were wait­ing to as­sist. Mo­hammed said he has had no fur­ther de­vel­op­ment. He said he un­der­stood the Re­turnees bill was un­der re­view and his dis­cus­sions with oth­er en­ti­ties on the ef­fort, in­di­cat­ed they were al­so await­ing the bill.