Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah says the des­ig­na­tion of Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC), Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and Hamas as ter­ror­ist groups would bode well for T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty sta­tus and ef­forts to pre­vent ter­ror fi­nanc­ing.

Heer­ah, how­ev­er, felt that any en­force­ment of poli­cies or leg­is­la­tion aimed at tack­ling the mi­gra­tion of ter­ror groups should be done with pre­ci­sion, clar­i­ty and fair­ness in mind.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on Mon­day, Heer­ah, a for­mer pro­fes­sor with the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tre for Se­cu­ri­ty Stud­ies in Ger­many on Counter Ter­ror­ism and Transna­tion­al Or­gan­ised Crime (TOC), said he was not op­posed to the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to cat­e­gorise these groups as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, but main­tained that ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ing the growth of ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions should be bal­anced with re­spect to dif­fer­ent de­mo­graph­ics.