Security stakeholders divided on Govt’s terrorist classification

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has en­dorsed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to clas­si­fy Hamas, Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah as ter­ror­ist groups, say­ing it is a means of en­abling the au­thor­i­ties to pre­vent fi­nanc­ing to armed groups.

Re­spond­ing to the de­ci­sion dur­ing CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Grif­fith re­ferred to sim­i­lar is­sues faced dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter when ter­ror group ISIS be­gan a se­ries of of­fen­sives in the Mid­dle East.

Grif­fith not­ed that a Unit­ed Na­tions frame­work pol­i­cy tar­get­ing the group through sanc­tions and dis­rupt­ing fi­nanc­ing ac­tiv­i­ties was ac­cept­ed by the then gov­ern­ment, not­ing that the lat­est de­ci­sion was nec­es­sary to pre­vent ter­ror­ist groups from re­ceiv­ing fund­ing.

“If this is not done, these ter­ror­ist groups... it hap­pened with my­self as min­is­ter with ISIS, it’s hap­pen­ing now with these three oth­er ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions, they fund hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, siphon it in­to dif­fer­ent ac­counts in­to dif­fer­ent arms that sup­port them in dif­fer­ent coun­tries,” Grif­fith said.

“These or­gan­i­sa­tions then use these funds to be able to train in­di­vid­u­als and then try to get them to go across in­to the Mid­dle East to be­come what is known as FTFs, they then bring them back in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go or what­ev­er oth­er coun­try to spread that de­gree of ter­ror­ism.”

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.

Grif­fith said such proac­tive mea­sures were nec­es­sary to pre­vent lo­cal groups from fund­ing groups iden­ti­fied as ter­ror groups, warn­ing that dili­gent mon­i­tor­ing by fi­nan­cial groups would be key in en­forc­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions.

“That is why we have to be very care­ful... that is why the im­por­tance of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit, work­ing with oth­er fi­nan­cial in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, to know that Hezbol­lah, ISIS or who­ev­er, they are now putting funds in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion or an in­di­vid­ual.”

How­ev­er, re­tired TT Coast Guard of­fi­cer Nor­man Din­di­al is not con­vinced that the de­ci­sion would bet­ter se­cure T&T.

In a video state­ment, Din­di­al, who worked as part of a Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) se­lect­ed team to com­bat ter­ror­ism and pira­cy in Mo­gadishu, So­ma­lia, said there was no le­gal ba­sis for the clas­si­fi­ca­tions, as he raised con­cerns over how T&T would be per­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has no le­gal oblig­a­tion and no na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to des­ig­nate Hamas, Hezbol­lah, or the IRGC as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions. The UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil has not done so. The ICJ has not done so. Uni­lat­er­al sanc­tions based on for­eign lists are legal­ly du­bi­ous and po­lit­i­cal­ly risky,” Din­di­al said.

“The IRGC is a con­sti­tut­ed army of a UN mem­ber state and can­not be re­clas­si­fied as a ter­ror­ist group with­out vi­o­lat­ing core prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“This pol­i­cy does not make Trinidad and To­ba­go safer. It makes us a client state in oth­er na­tions’ con­flicts, and it places our le­gal and diplo­mat­ic stand­ing at risk.”

Din­di­al said the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to take such a stance could car­ry se­ri­ous con­se­quences, as it not on­ly af­fects this coun­try’s sta­tus of neu­tral­i­ty, but al­so places it at risk of fac­ing le­gal re­dress.

He al­so ques­tioned the rea­son­ing for the des­ig­na­tion, not­ing that the IRGC was found­ed as a le­git­i­mate state-spon­sored arm of Iran’s armed forces, liken­ing it to an­oth­er gov­ern­ment plac­ing sim­i­lar sanc­tions against our mil­i­tary.

“If for­eign states can des­ig­nate our army or pro­tec­tive ser­vices, the prece­dent en­dan­gers our own se­cu­ri­ty in­sti­tu­tions.”

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) on the is­sue via email but was told by an of­fi­cial at the of­fice that the pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cial was on sick leave. The ques­tions were al­so for­ward­ed via email to the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment, who ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt but did not pro­vide a re­sponse up to press time.

Ques­tions to the strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vi­sor of the Min­istry of De­fence on the is­sue al­so went unan­swered up to press time.