’Raymond Craig, Deputy Commissioner of Police, is not who we want an apology from, we want it from the Commissioner of Police,’ says Imtiaz Mohammed, chairman of the Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago organisation.

Although Craig has taken ’full responsibility for what has transpired’during what has been termed ’the unwarranted questioning’ of Saudi Arabian diplomat Fawaz Abdul Rahman Alshubaili on Monday evening, Mohammed has said the community never requested an apology from him. He said Craig in fact is only adding insult to injury by ’trying to down-play what occurred and sweep their (the police’s) actions under the rug’.

On Tuesday night, Mohammed told the Express the police interrogated Alshubaili for close to an hour, made him take off his shirt and searched his possessions during their visit to his hotel room on Monday.

Mohammed said while some members of the Muslim community did express solidarity with the national police service at a press conference yesterday, saying the situation is being ’blown out of proportion’, he knows differently. He said Craig’s version of the events which say Alshubaili was in fine spirits when he left the country are ’false.’ He also said the man was not simply asked a few questions as Craig is stating.

’From what he told us, he was interrogated and the police did not treat him kindly,’ Mohammed said.

He said he spoke to the foreign diplomat, who was here to issue Saudi Arabian visas to local Muslims wanting to make the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca this year, before he left on Tuesday, and the man ’was visibly shaken and upset’.

’He was very angry, annoyed,’ said Mohammed.

Mohammed said when members of the Muslim community enquired from persons in the Ministry of National Security about the complaints that led the police to Alshubaili’s room at the Hyatt in the first place, some were told the police went there because they had gotten reports that persons dressed in ’Muslim garb’ had been visiting a man staying there, who also had ’40 passports and a photocopying machine’.