Trinidad gets warning about danger posed by returning terrorist fighters

(Trinidad Guardian) A se­nior US mil­i­tary of­fi­cer is warn­ing that the re­turn of T&T ter­ror­ist fight­ers can pose a ma­jor threat to this coun­try.

Chief of the Mil­i­tary Li­ai­son Of­fice, US Em­bassy, Colonel Clau­dia Car­riza­les said na­tion­als of this coun­try who are in de­ten­tion in Syr­ia and Iraq are ex­pect­ed to re­turn in a year.

 
Car­riza­les ques­tioned if our coun­try, Gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens are “ready to deal with that kind of threat.”

She made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the keynote ad­dress at a busi­ness fo­rum host­ed by the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T at the Hilton Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

The fo­rum was at­tend­ed by sev­er­al busi­ness lead­ers in­clud­ing ANSA McAL ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Nor­man Sab­ga.

Car­riza­les first spoke about the at­tempt­ed 2018 Car­ni­val ter­ror which she said was not a hoax.

“If there is any­one in this room that does not be­lieve that the Car­ni­val threat of 2018 was re­al, then you are hid­ing un­der a rock.”

While the av­er­age T&T cit­i­zen may have a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that “Tri­nis don’t blow up things…peo­ple it was re­al…and we were able to ad­dress that threat.” The po­lice ar­rest­ed 13 in­di­vid­u­als for the ter­ror plot who were lat­er re­leased with­out charge.

The fact that noth­ing hap­pened, Car­riza­les said was a “huge suc­cess for this coun­try,” and the Gov­ern­ment.

Such suc­cess, she said was as a re­sult of the US spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to train and work with our elite forces such T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Forces to en­sure that T&T was pre­pared for any type of ter­ror­ist sit­u­a­tion and transna­tion­al crime is­sues.

The Em­bassy and US Gov­ern­ment, Car­riza­les said have al­so part­nered with the Drug En­force­ment Agency and Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion to tack­le ter­ror­ism glob­al­ly. Ter­ror­ism, she said has the po­ten­tial to crip­ple in­vest­ments.

She said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty should not leave ter­ror­ism for the Gov­ern­ment alone to han­dle.

Car­riza­les asked if T&T was pre­pared for the re­turn of for­eign fight­ers in our coun­try.

She said even though the US and T&T may dis­agree on the “po­lit­i­cal lev­el,” the US would nev­er turn its back on T&T in its time of need.

With­in the next year or so, Car­riza­les said “you will even­tu­al­ly have some hard­ened for­eign ter­ror­ist fight­ers re­turn­ing to this coun­try. Like it or not.” Car­riza­les said a num­ber of these fight­ers are cur­rent­ly in de­ten­tion in Syr­ia and Iraq.

It was es­ti­mat­ed that more than 100 T&T cit­i­zens left T&T to join the Is­lam­ic State.

While some peo­ple think that “God is a Tri­ni” and these fight­ers may nev­er make it back home and the US will take care of those “bad guys” we have to wake up to re­al­i­ty.

“Those are your cit­i­zens. They are your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. And as a coun­try, you are go­ing to have to deal with it. Are you ready to deal with that kind of threat? What are you do­ing as busi­ness lead­ers to as­sist in the prob­lem that is go­ing to face you very short­ly fast and fu­ri­ous.”

Car­riza­les said the men who tried to desta­bilise T&T for the Car­ni­val sea­son can be seen as “boys scouts” com­pared to these for­eign ex­trem­ists.

“You can see them as boy scouts. Yes, they had the rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion men­tal­i­ty and they want­ed to do bad things. But when you com­pare them to what is com­ing back those guys are boys scouts.”

What has been miss­ing in this coun­try, in her opin­ion, Car­riza­les said “when it comes to ter­ror­ism and not any­thing hap­pen­ing here of great im­pact” was “that charis­mat­ic, hard­core, Mus­lim for­eign fight­er that comes back and can ral­ly the rest of those. Then you have a prob­lem.”

She said the root of rad­i­cal­ism lies in com­mu­ni­ties at risk.

Car­riza­les said T&T needs to un­der­stand that they have to play a key role in all of this.

“We al­so want T&T to know that al­though we don’t agree with every­thing we ex­pect reci­procity. This can­not be a one-way re­la­tion­ship.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi has promised that re­turn­ing T&T fight­ers will be put un­der se­cu­ri­ty radar.