For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of its de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate three Mid­dle East­ern or­gan­i­sa­tions as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties, fol­low­ing a High Court or­der freez­ing prop­er­ty linked to the groups un­der Trinidad and To­ba­go’s An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act.

The or­der, pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette on Mon­day, ap­plies to Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC), and rep­re­sents one of the most ex­ten­sive us­es of the An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act in re­cent years.

The court di­rec­tive ef­fec­tive­ly freezes all lo­cal as­sets as­so­ci­at­ed with the des­ig­nat­ed en­ti­ties, sig­nalling a sig­nif­i­cant es­ca­la­tion in the coun­try’s ap­pli­ca­tion of counter-ter­ror­ism mea­sures.