(Trinidad Newsday) THERE may be about 15 Trinidad & Tobago children in refugee camps in Syria, but a news story in the Daily Telegraph of London on Friday said a mother, who is a TT citizen, could not be accounted for. Neither can her British-born son.
Nicole Jack, 32, left Trinidad & Tobago in 2005 for England where she met her husband and, in 2015, they went to Syria to join ISIS, the Telegraph story said.
Since then she has not contacted her mother, who lives in London and who fears she has been killed.
Charleen Jack-Henry, 51, of West London, is reported in the Daily Telegraph as appealing to the authorities in Syria to repatriate her daughter’s four children to London.
The story said her daughter Nicole and her 12-year-old son were said to be in refugee camps.
Interviewed in the Telegraph, Jack-Henry said Nicole was from TT and was born into a Christian family, but converted to Islam after she married in 2005 in London, then “vanished in 2015 with her jihadist husband.”
Jack-Henry said since then she had never heard from Nicole whose children were born in England. They are, Isaac, 12, Naima, nine, Somaiya, seven, and Khadijah, five. Isaac, is also feared missing, raising fears that he may have been “taken into battle.”
Jack-Henry in appealing for British authorities to repatriate her grandchildren, told the Telegraph while three of the children were on lists of refugees living in camps, she did not know what had become of her daughter and Isaac.
“I’m so worried about them, especially the children. I don’t understand why only three of them are listed in the camp. I’m worried Isaac was taken off to fight. I really pray all of them are all right.”
She said her daughter was coerced into going to Syria and would not have left otherwise.
Newsday contacted two members of the Muslim community in Chaguanas and Diego Martin who, speaking anonymously, said they were reliably informed that several men, their wives and even children from Trinidad & Tobago who left for Syria in 2014 had been killed.
Newsday was asked not to mention the district, but janaaza prayers, the final rites in the Muslim burial service, were said last month for those believed to have been killed in Syria.
