Bakr: Swap Venezuelan prisoners to free Trinis

“We congratulated him (Rowley) in the maintenance of the good relationship, the long good standing relationship that we had with Venezuela and we still have and that we have responded to their needs in a time that they really needed help and I think the Venezuelans authorities would be very, very willing, as a show of good will and appreciation for what we have done to send those people (home),” Bakr told a press conference at the Enterprise Community Masjid, Boodram Street, Enterprise village, Chaguanas yesterday.

“We want to remind Dr Rowley that he had given an undertaking to do a prisoner exchange with Venezuela, and so today we are asking him to also put that on the front burner and with some expediency have these nationals returned,” he said, noting prisoner exchanges were done by antagonist states like Israel and Palestine, frequently.

“This is not a legal issue, this is a political issue, we have a number of prisoners here from Venezuela, who might have overstayed their times, not necessarily criminals and they have a few, the exchange of prisoners, diplomacy happens every day,” he said.

TT nationals — Wade Charles, Dominic Pitilal, Asim Luqman, Andre Battersby and Leslie Daisely — were initially detained in Venezuela on suspicion of terrorism in 2014 but those were later dropped and replaced with new charges. Imam Taulib Searles revealed the five nationals had embarked on a hunger strike as a means of attracting the attention of the Venezuelan authorities.

“The hunger strike has been happening in Venezuela for over a week now, the decision was made to go on the hunger strike because, it seems as though it is the only way to attract the attention of the authorities in Venezuela,” Searles said. “They are being closely monitored, our brothers are right now very weak, but they are continuing the hunger strike,” he said.

“We the Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago, we are going to take some form of action, the very same way, we may not go on a hunger strike but we will let our presence be felt because we are not satisfied with staying quiet while our brothers languish in prison.” He also cited a 45-page document issued by the US Human Rights organization in 2015 about the judicial system in Venezuela.

Also addressing the press conference was Hamza Mohammed, imam for Montrose Muslim Association mosque, Chaguanas, who was also detained in Venezuela and later released, saying that prison life was a traumatic experience for him.