Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The State has of­fi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed three ma­jor Mid­dle East­ern para­mil­i­tary and po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties, trig­ger­ing an im­me­di­ate freeze on any Trinidad and To­ba­go as­sets linked to the groups.

In a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­vel­op­ment, the High Court of T&T or­dered the freez­ing of all lo­cal prop­er­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) un­der pro­vi­sions of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act.

The or­ders, pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette yes­ter­day (April 13), mark one of the most far-reach­ing ap­pli­ca­tions of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act in re­cent years.

The de­c­la­ra­tions were is­sued by High Court judges be­tween April 8 and 9 and re­quire on­go­ing six-month re­views by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, un­der­scor­ing con­tin­ued ju­di­cial and ex­ec­u­tive over­sight of the list­ings.

Ac­cord­ing to the Gazette, Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in is­sued freez­ing or­ders on April 8 in re­la­tion to both Hezbol­lah and the IRGC. A sep­a­rate or­der is­sued by Jus­tice Jacque­line Wil­son on April 9 list­ed Hamas as a de­clared en­ti­ty.

The High Court or­ders di­rect­ed that all prop­er­ty owned or con­trolled lo­cal­ly by the three or­gan­i­sa­tions, whether whol­ly, joint­ly, di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, must be im­me­di­ate­ly frozen. The mea­sures al­so ex­tend to as­sets that may be held through in­ter­me­di­aries or proxy arrange­ments.

How­ev­er, the lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion/s linked to the three groups were redact­ed in the gazetted no­tice.

The pub­li­ca­tion in the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Gazette sig­nals the for­mal le­gal ac­ti­va­tion of the or­ders, mak­ing them en­force­able across all fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, prop­er­ty reg­istries and rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies with­in T&T. Fur­ther up­dates are ex­pect­ed fol­low­ing the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s six-month statu­to­ry re­view cy­cle, which could de­ter­mine whether the list­ings re­main in force or are sub­ject to vari­a­tion based on in­tel­li­gence and le­gal as­sess­ments.

The move places T&T with­in a tight­en­ing glob­al frame­work tar­get­ing ter­ror­ist-fi­nanc­ing net­works, par­tic­u­lar­ly those iden­ti­fied by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies such as the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil un­der Res­o­lu­tion 1373 and mon­i­tored through Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF) com­pli­ance mech­a­nisms.

Coun­tries across Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca and parts of the Caribbean have in­creas­ing­ly moved to align do­mes­tic leg­is­la­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions regimes tar­get­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the IRGC, all of which are sub­ject to vary­ing de­grees of des­ig­na­tion by ma­jor glob­al pow­ers, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Ef­forts to con­tact De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge and Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Sean Sobers were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day, as calls to their phones went unan­swered.

How­ev­er, at­tor­ney CJ Williams yes­ter­day queried the tim­ing of the de­ci­sion made by the Gov­ern­ment.

“While is­sues of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty are of­ten cit­ed to jus­ti­fy lim­it­ed dis­clo­sure, there must still be clar­i­ty on the da­ta dri­ving these de­ci­sions. Is Trinidad and To­ba­go now at a point where ac­tions are be­ing tak­en sole­ly on the say-so of for­eign pow­ers, with­out in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al?” Williams asked.

He added, “As far as I am aware, the law has not changed. Such de­ter­mi­na­tions should be ground­ed in re­ports from the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). How­ev­er, those re­ports have not been made avail­able for the past two years.”

Williams added that the lack of trans­paren­cy sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­its the abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly as­sess or ad­vise on the Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est move, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en what ap­pears to be a con­sis­tent fail­ure to pro­duce SSA re­ports.

Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion wor­ried about stig­ma­ti­sa­tion

The Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of ad­vanc­ing a for­eign-aligned agen­da that un­fair­ly tar­gets Mus­lims fol­low­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion against the three in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies and the court ap­pli­ca­tions.

PRO Im­ti­az Mo­hammed said yes­ter­day that the move by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al rais­es “se­ri­ous con­cerns” about bias and tim­ing, ar­gu­ing that it al­so risks re­in­forc­ing stig­ma against Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He ques­tioned why the ap­pli­ca­tions are be­ing pur­sued at this time, point­ing to on­go­ing na­tion­al con­cerns, in­clud­ing crime lev­els and the ef­fec­tive­ness of the State of Emer­gency. Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed the Gov­ern­ment may be us­ing the is­sue to di­vert at­ten­tion from do­mes­tic chal­lenges.

The group fur­ther ac­cused the State of align­ing it­self with the for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tions of Unit­ed States and Is­rael, link­ing the le­gal ac­tion to wider geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in the Mid­dle East.

While stat­ing that he does not sup­port ter­ror­ism, Mo­hammed said the or­gan­i­sa­tions named in the court fil­ings are viewed by some as re­sis­tance move­ments, a po­si­tion that is ex­pect­ed to in­ten­si­fy pub­lic de­bate in T&T.

He al­so called for ac­count­abil­i­ty on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage, ref­er­enc­ing Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu and ques­tion­ing whether sim­i­lar scruti­ny would be ap­plied to oth­er glob­al lead­ers ac­cused of war crimes.