AG: Terror Bill doesn't discriminate but protects

THE Anti-Terrorism Bill does not discriminate against Muslims and does not blindly use Arabic terms like “Al Qaeda”, “Daesh” and “Boko Haram” assured Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi as the Lower House yesterday debated a Joint Select Committee (JSC) Report on the legislation. He said that given his own personal heritage and Iraqi ancestry, he does not think that such Arabic words are condemnatory of Muslims in general, but that is just his personal view which had to be subsumed into the views of the committee which ditched such terms that had otherwise been used by the United Nations.

Al-Rawi went on to say the bill was needed to cub money-laundering and terrorist financing because otherwise TT’s financial system could be cut off from the rest of the world for non-compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF.)

“There is a global interconnectivity,” he said of TT’s finance/business linkages, disclosing that TT is the source of a whopping 17 per cent of BP’s global revenue. He denied the legislation was a surrender of TT’s sovereignty, but spelt out the reality that a TT national Shane “Abu Sa’d al-Trinidadi” Crawford was once featuring internationally in a magazine promoting the ISIS philosophy.

Al-Rawi hoped to strike the right balance between allowing Muslim alms known as zakat to flow freely but without allowing terrorist funding. He said anyone found in a “declared area” of terrorism would have a chance to explain themselves to the TT law enforcement authorities.

If people leave TT and go to the Middle East to support ISIS and take their children too, the State has a duty to such youngsters and will treat them very specially, the AG added.