Blind faith

Mr Abdul Kadir’s arrest earlier this year heightened widespread dread of terror attacks against targets in the western world by Islamic extremists. Mr Kadir, an imam from Linden, has been accused of alleged involvement in a plot to sabotage a fuel pipeline feeding the John F Kennedy International Airport in the USA.

Even before concrete evidence of a credible conspiracy emerged, it was clear that the case had been cast as part of a tangled web of religious faith, local politics and international crime.

President Bharrat Jagdeo quickly described the suspects as “absolutely crazy” and vowed that his administration was “not going to tolerate any of this madness here.” Minister of Home Affairs Mr Clement Rohee reiterated what he called the administration’s “principled position” against international terrorism. Mr Fazeel Ferouz, president of this country’s largest pro-Saudi Arabian Sunni organisation – the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana – announced that it does not condone, agree with, or support any manifestation of terrorism.

Apart from the criminal charges brought against Mr Kadir, several salient issues have surfaced. To start with, he is arguably the most prominent person in this country associated with the local Shia Muslim community. In fact, two of his children are Islamic scholars and graduates of the religious centre of Kum, Iran.

After the mysterious murder of Mohammed Hassan Ibrahimi, an Iranian national and the director of the Shia International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, Iranian detectives came to Guyana to investigate the crime, but no one was ever charged. The centre, a private institution, received its funding from Iran and it is not insignificant that Mr Kadir was arrested while en route to Iran where he had been invited to attend an Islamic conference.

At the time of Mr Ibrahimi’s murder, Mr Kadir expressed puzzlement at the silence of pro-Saudi Islamic groups on the crime. He need not have. The fact is that, in contrast to the noisy condemnation of his own alleged conspiracy, official reaction to certain other types of organised crime over the past decade has been selective and ambivalent.

There have been no howls of outrage against one prominent muslim, an executive member of a West Demerara jamaat, who served a prison sentence for his role in the United States Embassy visa racket – thought to be the largest ever corruption scandal in the US Diplomatic Service, in 2000.

Or another, the proprietor of an aquaculture enterprise, charged in 2003 with having 94 Guyanese passports; 10 United States passports; 9 Canadian passports; 38 Trinidadian passports; 5 Barbadian passports; one Guyana immigration entry stamp and one Guyana immigration departure stamp, suspected to be stolen, and several illegal firearms and ammunition, all in his possession.

Yet another, the proprietor of a chain of fuel stations, who was charged in 2005 when one of his properties was found to contain contraband fuel. Another, the late proprietor of a prominent cambio, had been arraigned on gun and ammunition charges shortly before his death. Another, a fugitive from justice in the USA who now faces trial there, was arrested by the Suriname police in 2006 in a raid that netted more than 200 kg of cocaine. And so the story goes.

The accusations, arrests, deaths and denials are anything but coincidental. Mr Ibrahimi, for example, regularly received his funds from Iran through the same cambio at which a suspect in the current airport conspiracy also worked and where a notorious al Qaeda terrorist – Adnan el Shukrijumah – was reportedly seen up to 2003.

In this lawless labyrinth of influence-peddling, money-laundering, narcotics-trafficking, fuel-smuggling, gun-running, murder and illegal migration, opportunities abound for trans-national crime. Under the pretext of religious cooperation, the local criminal infrastructure can be used as a platform for moving terrorists from middle eastern and south Asian countries to north American and western European destinations. This is the real concern of Canada, the UK and USA.

The administration and religious organisations must not be seen to be deaf, dumb and blind to selected felonies while screaming stridently against others. They must condemn and act decisively against all crime, regardless of the political or doctrinal affiliation of the culprits.