9/11 anniversary renews debate over T&T’s terrorism threat

As Trinidad and To­ba­go joins the world in mark­ing 25 years since the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror­ist at­tacks in the Unit­ed States, a lead­ing lo­cal Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion is re­new­ing its call for the Gov­ern­ment to re­verse its des­ig­na­tion of Hamas, Hezbol­lah and Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties.

At the same time, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Mal­isa Nep­tune-Fi­garo is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford to be­come com­pla­cent about the con­tin­u­ing threat of rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, said that al­most five months af­ter the des­ig­na­tions, he was un­aware of any mem­bers of the lo­cal Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty hav­ing their as­sets frozen, bank ac­counts af­fect­ed or be­ing sub­ject­ed to ad­di­tion­al scruti­ny as a con­se­quence of the mea­sures.