Government seeks to freeze assets of Trinidadian suspected of terrorism

The Trinidad government has filed an application seeking the High Court’s permission to seize the assets of a national imprisoned overseas who is suspected of being involved in terrorism.

The exparte application was made under Section 22 (B) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which states that the Attorney General can submit a request to freeze the assets of an individual or entity where there are reasonable grounds to believe that entity or individual has knowingly committed or participated in the commission of a terrorist act, or is knowingly acting on behalf of, at the direction of, or in association with such an individual.
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi made the disclosure on Tuesday during a meeting of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force. He said the application related to a request that had been pending for some time.

“As incoming AG I met an application which was languishing and in respect of which there had been a conviction. I saw it as an important deliverable to proceed with that application to court and so I took the exercise of gelling the application into its proper form, ensured the evidence was behind the application and in very short measure made the approach to court today,” he said.

“Matters cannot afford to be in the system for long. You must deal with them conclusively and if you can’t deal with them, you have to say why.”

Al-Rawi did not disclose the identity of the individual named in the application, but local newspapers reported that the man who is the subject of the application is convicted JFK bomb plotter Kareem Ibrahim.

The Trinidadian was sentenced in 2012 to life in prison for conspiring to commit a terrorist attack at John F Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York by exploding fuel tanks and a fuel pipeline under the airport.

– Caribbean360