Gail Alexan­der

From Syr­ia straight to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty Cen­tre.

That’s was what await­ed two chil­dren—re­turn­ing from Syr­ia— af­ter the High Court, yes­ter­day grant­ed the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty an or­der to have the boys made wards of the court.

The Au­thor­i­ty will be as­sess­ing their health, de­vel­op­ment and the way in which they would be treat­ed.

The court al­so or­dered that the boys will be close­ly mon­i­tored by the Au­thor­i­ty for an ini­tial pe­ri­od of six months “to de­ter­mine the ad­di­tion­al needs” the chil­dren will re­quire “sub­se­quent to their place­ment with their moth­er.”

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young told re­porters yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to get the court or­der to have the chil­dren as­sessed on their re­turn from abroad.

The boys age 11 and sev­en were tak­en to Syr­ia by their fa­ther, an Isis sol­dier who has re­port­ed­ly been killed. The In­ter­na­tion­al Red Cross had told Gov­ern­ment that the boys who were at the Roj de­ten­tion camp in Syr­ia were T&T na­tion­als. Their moth­er went to Syr­ia (with UK as­sis­tance) and re­unit­ed with the boys ear­li­er this week.

Young said Gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties and se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies would be on hand to meet them on ar­rival. The gov­ern­ment had planned to ask the chil­dren’s moth­er for con­sent to have the boys as­sessed, he added.

Young not­ed that the Is­lam­ic State (Isis) sub­ject­ed young­sters to “train­ing” to be­come fight­ers and as­sess­ment would in­clude if any sort of train­ing oc­curred.

Af­ter Young spoke, the High Court is­sued a state­ment that it had grant­ed the as­sess­ment or­der.

The as­sess­ment will be done at the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty as­sess­ment cen­tre. It en­tails a med­ical, so­cial, psy­cho­log­i­cal, psy­cho-so­cial, psy­cho-ed­u­ca­tion­al and psy­chi­atric ex­am­i­na­tion of the boys, their par­ents and grand­par­ents.

The or­der al­lows the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty to file and serve sup­ple­men­tal af­fi­davits “as may be nec­es­sary hav­ing re­gard to the find­ings of any con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and any re­sults from “the or­der.” The court al­so or­dered the me­dia not to pub­lish the iden­ti­ties or pho­tographs of the boys.

Young said Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing through agen­cies like the Red Cross to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion on T&T na­tion­als in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions since 130 na­tion­als had left T&T be­tween 2012-14 for Syr­ia.

He could not say how many were killed and how many T&T chil­dren are in the Mid­dle East.

But he said, for in­stance, there has been in­for­ma­tion on a fam­i­ly, moth­er and daugh­ters, de­tained in Iraq and there was no word on whether the fa­ther of the fam­i­ly had been ex­e­cut­ed.

Fam­i­ly pa­tri­arch Imam Naz­im Mo­hammed has ap­pealed for Gov­ern­ment help to get them home since he has about sev­en young great-grands among them.

Young said all war zone re­turnees are mon­i­tored by se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.